Jifornia 

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!ity 


UNTV.  OF  CALIF.  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 


IT'S  A 
GOOD  OLD  WORLD 


IT'S  A 
GOOD  OLD  WORLD 

BEING  A  COLLECTION  OF  LITTLE  ESSAYS 
ON  VARIOUS  SUBJECTS  OF 
HUMAN  INTEREST 


BY 

BRUCE  BARTON 

Author  of  "More  Power  to  You,"  "The 
Making  of  George  Groton,"  etc. 


NEW  YORK 
THE  CENTURY  CO. 

1920 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
THE  CENTURY  Co. 


BETWEEN  OURSELVES 

Magazine  editors  are  genial  gentle 
men.  They  pay  us  for  the  pieces  we  write 
and  allow  us  to  gather  them  later  into 
books.  To  Karl  Harriman,  editor  of  the 
"  Red  Book" ;  George  Martin,  editor  of 
"Farm  and  Fireside";  Harford  Powel, 
editor  of  "Collier's  Weekly";  W.  W. 
Hawkins,  General  Manager  of  the  United 
Press  Associations,  and  Frank  Ober,  edi 
tor  of  "  Association  Men,"  who  have  given 
their  cordial  permission  for  the  republica- 
tion  of  the  little  essays  that  follow,  I  ex 
press  my  gratitude  and  thanks. 

The  book  is  named  in  honor  of  our 
common  friend,  this  Good  Old  World. 
I  admire  the  quiet,  patient  fashion  in 
which  he  goes  around  about  the  same  old 
task,  day  after  day  and  year  after  year. 
I  admire  his  magnificent  tolerance  toward 
all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  many  of 


2126046 


Between  Ourselves 

whom  must  frequently  prove  very  irritat 
ing  passengers.  And  I  want  him  to  un 
derstand  that  if  he  has  no  objection  I  plan 
to  ride  along  with  him  for  another  sev 
enty  years  at  least. 

B.  B. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I    EXPECT   TO   BE    ENTIRELY    CONSISTENT  —  AFTER 

NINETY  3 

WATCHING  THE  PRINCE  EARN  His  PAY  ....  7 

A  GREAT  LITTLE  WORD  Is  "  WHY  " 12 

DON'T  LAY  IN  A  STOCK  OF  CAMOUFLAGE:  IT  HAS 

DEPRECIATED  BADLY  IN  VALUE  SINCE  THE  WAR  17 
WE'RE  ALL  IN  THE  SAME  BOAT:  AND  CAN'T  GET 

OUT 22 

"WHAT!  LITTLE  JOHNNY  DUGAN?"  ....  27 

FIRST  HAVE  A  LOOK  AT  THE  FIGURES 31 

WHY  NOT  USE  OUR  ISLAND  OF  YAP?  ....  35 

THE  SECOND  MILE 39 

"  WHICH  KNEW  NOT  JOSEPH  " 43 

HE  CALLED  THE  PRESIDENT  "  CHARLEY  "...  47 
A  COURSE  OF  READING  FOR  A  YOUNG  MAN  ABOUT 

TO  RUN  INTO  DEBT 51 

ON  MEETING  AN  INSIGNIFICANT  MAN  ....  54 
IT'S  A  MOVING  PICTURE  WORLD,  AND  THE  FILM 

CHANGES  EVERY  FEW  MINUTES 58 

ARE  You  INDUSTRIOUS,  OR  MERELY  BUSY?  ...  63 
IF  You  ARE  NOT  TOO  CAREFUL  WHO  GETS  THE 

CREDIT 68 

THE  REFLECTIONS  OF  A  GRIZZLED  VOTER  ...  73 

"  THEY  SAY  "  HAS  MADE  MANY  A  GOOD  MAN  GOOD  . 

FOR  NOTHING 78 

You  HAVE  KNOWN  ABOUT  HIM  ALL  THESE  YEARS, 

BUT  HAVE  You  REALLY  KNOWN  HIM  ?  .  .  .  83 

BE  SURE  YOU'RE  RIGHT  —  AND  THEN  DON'T  Do  IT  87 


Contents 

PAGE 

I  HAVE  ALWAYS  HAD  A  SOFT  SPOT  IN  MY  HEART 
FOR  JOSEPH 91 

"AND  HE  GOETH" 95 

"!N  A  MANGER" 99 

WHY  YOUR  EYES  ARE  IN  THE   FRONT  OF  YOUR 

HEAD 103 

WOULD  You  BE  GREAT?    THEN  EXPECT  SUFFER 
ING:     FOR    IT    Is    THE    STUFF    GREATNESS    Is 

MADE  OF 107 

IF  THERE  WERE  ONLY  A  TAX  ON  TALK  .     .     .     .  in 

THE  GREAT  GOD  "MUST" 115 

PUT  GREAT  MEN  TO  WORK  FOR  You:    IT  DOESN'T 

COST  ANYTHING 119 

HEZEKIAH    Is    DEAD:    BUT    His    FORMULA    STILL 

HOLDS  GOOD 123 

THE  FINE  RARE  HABIT  OF  LEARNING  TO  DO  WITH 
OUT      128 

IT   RUINED    MICHELANGELO:    AND   IT   CAN   RUIN 

You 133 

DON'T  EXPECT  ANYTHING  VERY  STARTLING  FROM 

AN   ORACLE 136 

ON  HEARING  FROM  MANY  UNHAPPY  HVSBANDS  AND 

WIVES 140 

WHAT  MAKES  MEDIUM-SIZED  MEN  GREAT?  .  .  .  145 
THE  GREATEST  SPORTING  PROPOSITION  IN  THE 

WORLD 149 

To  A  CAN  OF  BEANS  —  PLANTED  AND  CANNED  BY 

OURSELVES 153 

LINCOLN  PULLED  THROUGH  AND  So  SHALL  WE  .  -157 
"THEY  WHO  TARRY  BY  THE  STUFF"  .  .  .  .162 
THAT  FINE  OLD  FAKE  ABOUT  THE  GOOD  OLD  DAYS  .  166 

EVERYBODY  HAS  SOMETHING 170 

WORKING  FOR  IT  —  AND  MAKING  IT  WORK  .     .     .  174 

WHEN  MEN  COME  UP  TO  THE  END 178 

IF  You  CAN'T  FALL  IN  LOVE  WITH  YOUR  JOB,  FOR 
GOODNESS'  SAKE  CHANGE  IT 182 


Contents 

PAGE 

THE    BUSINESS    OF    DISTRIBUTING     MEDALS    HAS 

RATHER  GOT  INTO  A  RUT 186 

THE   FINEST  INVESTMENT  You  CAN  MAKE  Is  TO 
HELP  THE  RIGHT  YOUNG  MAN  FIND  THE  RIGHT 

JOB 191 

THE  WORLD  Is  OWNED  BY  MEN  WHO  CROSS  BRIDGES 

BEFORE  THEY  COME  TO  THEM 195 

WE  SHALL  WIN  —  IF  OUR  SENSE  OF  HUMOR  LASTS  199 
LIVING  IN  A  LIMOUSINE  AND  LIVING  IN  A  TUB  .     .  203 
DEMOCRACY  Is  A  NEW  SHOW,  AND  EVERY  CITIZEN  Is 
THE   STAGE-MANAGER 207 

Is  YOUR  CONVERSATION  A  GOOD  ADVERTISEMENT  FOR 
You? 212 

AND  A  DOG  RUNS  OUT  AND  BARKS  .  216 


IT  'S  A  GOOD  OLD  WORLD 


IT'S  A  GOOD  OLD  WORLD 

I  EXPECT  TO  BE  ENTIRELY 

CONSISTENT  —  AFTER 

NINETY 

A  READER  writes  to  reprove  me  be 
cause  a  statement  in  a  recent  edi 
torial  apparently  contradicts  something 
which  I  wrote  a  year  ago. 

"  A  writer  ought  at  least  to  be  consist 
ent,"  he  says.  Which,  of  course,  is  the 
last  thing  that  any  writer  —  below  the  age 
of  ninety  < —  ought  to  be  too  much  con 
cerned  about. 

For  it  is  the  business  of  men,  whether 
writers  or  not,  to  see  truth  and  to  express 
it  in  their  lives.  That  a  man  should  see 
more  truth  this  year  than  he  saw  last,  and 
should  hope  to  see  even  more  in  the  year 
to  come,  is  a  perfectly  normal  expectation. 
And  inevitably  the  larger  vision  of  this 
year  will  reveal  the  shortcomings  of  the 
past. 

3 


4         It's  a  Good  Old  World 

I  talked  the  other  day  with  the  president 
of  one  of  the  nation's  greatest  businesses. 
Said  he: 

"  I  go  down  to  my  office  these  days  with 
my  mind  absolutely  open ;  I  am  prepared  at 
a  moment's  notice  to  reverse  our  entire 
business  practice,  if  the  conditions  demand 
it.  With  the  world  in  tumult  as  it  is  to 
day,  the  concern  which  says,  '  We  have  al 
ways  done  it  this  way,'  or  '  Such  and  such 
a  course  is  not  in  line  with  our  previous 
policy,'  is  riding  for  a  fall. 

"  A  foolish  consistency  is  the  hobgoblin 
of  little  minds,"  Emerson  exclaimed. 
"  With  consistency  a  great  soul  has  simply 
nothing  to  do.  He  may  as  well  concern 
himself  with  his  shadow  on  the  wall.  Out 
upon  your  guarded  lips!  ...  If  you 
would  be  a  man,  speak  what  you  think  to 
day  in  words  as  hard  as  cannon-balls,  and 
to-morrow  speak  what  to-morrow  thinks 
in  hard  words  again,  though  it  contradict 
everything  you  said  to-day.  '  Ah,  then,' 
exclaim  the  aged  ladies,  '  you  shall  be  sure 
to  be  misunderstood!'  Misunderstood! 
It  is  a  fool's  word.  Is  it  so  bad,  then,  to 


Consistent  After  Ninety          5 

be  misunderstood?  Pythagoras  was  mis 
understood,  and  Socrates,  and  Jesus  and 
Copernicus  and  Galileo  and  Newton  and 
every  pure  and  wise  spirit  that  ever  took 
flesh.  To  be  great  is  to  be  misunder 
stood." 

The  butterfly  is  not  consistent  with  the 
chrysalis:  nobody  expects  a  frog  to  con 
form  to  the  standards  of  the  tadpole. 
Nature  is  herself  the  great  parent  of  con 
tradictions;  and  nothing  in  her  universe  is. 
perfectly  consistent  but  the  eternal  hills, 
and  old  dogs  who  lie  all  day  in  the  sun 
shine,  and  men  whose  brains  have  hardened 
into  shells. 

A  man  owes  this  obligation  to  himself  — 
that  he  should  keep  his  vision  high  and  his 
footsteps  fixed  in  the  path  that  leads  to 
ward  the  stars.  Sometimes  that  path  will 
lie  straight  and  clear;  sometimes  it  will 
bend  to  the  left  or  right;  and  sometimes  he 
may  have  to  retrace  his  steps  in  order  to 
fix  his  feet  firmly  upon  it.  When  that 
necessity  arises,  there  should  be  no  hesita 
tion. 

I  like  to  remember  Dr.  David  Swing, 


6          It's  a  Good  Old  World 

who  was  for  many  years  pastor  of  the 
Brick  Presbyterian  Church  on  Fifth  Ave 
nue.  Through  a  long  lifetime  he  ex 
pounded  the  truth  to  his  people  as  his  spirit 
revealed  it  to  him.  And  at  the  very  end  of 
his  days  new  truth  came  to  him,  and  he 
rose  in  his  pulpit  and  confessed  frankly 
that  all  of  his  previous  preaching  had  been 
in  large  measure  mistaken. 

St.  Augustine,  toward  the  end  of  his 
career,  published  a  good-sized  book  called 
"  Retractions."  Only  a  big  man  could 
have  written  such  a  book;  for  only  a  big 
man  continues  to  grow  straight  up  to  the 
very  last. 

Be  not  too  fearful  of  inconsistencies-; 
for  if  you  are  growing  as  you  should  be 
growing,  consistency,  which  is  the  harden 
ing  of  the  mental  and  spiritual  arteries, 
ought  not  to  set  in 

—  until  you  are  ninety,  at  least. 


WATCHING  THE  PRINCE  EARN 
HIS  PAY 

THE  Prince  was  to  ride  up  the  Avenue, 
and  we  all  put  on  our  hats  and  went 
out  onto  the  side-walk  to  cheer. 

As  he  came  along  smiling,  with  his  hat 
on  the  side  of  his  head,  I  could  not  help 
marvelling  a  little  at  the  changes  time  can 
work. 

My  first  ancestor  in  this  country, 
William,  spent  several  of  the  best  years  of 
his  life  fighting  the  Prince's  ancestor, 
George. 

For  many,  many  years  dislike  and  dis 
trust  of  the  English  were  fed  to  us  from 
the  pages  of  our  first  readers. 

Emerson's  poem  expressed  the  common 
American  judgment  about  the  gentlemen 
who  sit  on  thrones: 

God  said  "  I  am  tired  of  Kings, 
I  suffer  them  no  more. 
Up  to  my  ear  the  morning  brings 
The  outrage  of  the  poor." 
7 


8 

Yet  here  was  I,  the  descendant  of  a 
Revolutionary  fighter,  taking  time  away 
from  the  office  to  cheer  for  the  son  of  a 
King,  and  an  English  King  at  that. 

The  explanation,  of  course,  is  simple. 
It  is  not  we  who  have  changed,  but  the 
kings.  They  have  at  last  found  a  real  job 
for  themselves,  and  we  respect  them,  as 
we  respect  any  man  who  has  work  to  do 
and  does  it  well. 

They  are  now  the  travelling  salesmen 
of  their  countries. 

Take  the  Belgians  for  example.  Be 
fore  the  war  we  looked  on  them  as  a  rather 
unattractive  people  inclined  to  squalidness 
both  physical  and  mental. 

Along  comes  Albert,  their  sales  man 
ager,  with  his  sample  case  and  opens  it  be 
fore  us.  He  has  a  fine  line  of  courtesy; 
something  very  nice  in  the  way  of  true 
sportsmanship;  a  very  superior  article  of 
good  looks;  and  an  entirely  modern  and 
up-to-date  sense  of  humor. 

After  we  have  seen  the  samples  it  is  no 
great  task  for  him  to  sell  us  quite  a  differ 
ent  idea  of  the  Belgians.  We  will  be 


Watching  the  Prince  9 

much  more  inclined,  in  the  future,  to  give 
them  what  every  people  have  the  right  to 
demand  —  the  privilege  of  being  judged 
by  their  best  rather  than  by  their  less  at 
tractive  characteristics. 

So  with  Edward  of  the  firm  of  Great 
Britain  and  Co. 

He  knows  well  enough  that  our  dealings 
with  his  House  have  not  been  altogether 
satisfactory  in  the  past.  He  comes  with 
the  idea  of  straightening  out  all  the  old 
complaints  and  convincing  us  that  this 
year's  line  is  entirely  unlike  anything  we 
have  previously  bought. 

Are  we  too  much  stocked-up  with  the 
old  style  Englishman  —  side  whiskers  — 
prejudices  —  stodginess  —  lack  of  humor 
and  all? 

"  That 's  our  pre-war  brand,"  says  Ed 
ward.  "  We  Ve  entirely  discarded  that. 
The  House  is  under  new  management  and 
we  're  putting  out  a  very  superior  article. 

"  Here  's  a  sample  of  our  smiles  —  you 
never  knew  an  Englishman  could  smile. 

"  Here 's  a  choice  bit  of  democracy 
which  we  Ve  recently  added  to  the  line. 


10        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

"  Notice  this  patent  bit  of  openmind- 
edness,  an  exclusive  feature  of  this  year's 
model." 

He  's  a  good  little  salesman  with  a  win 
ning  smile;  and  I  for  one  am  all  prepared 
to  put  the  old  prejudices  aside  and  open  a 
good  line  of  credit  with  his  House. 

I  know  a  man  who  has  a  curious  job. 
He  is  paid  just  to  visit  conventions  and 
banquets  of  his  company's  customers  and 
tell  funny  stories. 

No  spasm  of  economy  ever  endangers 
his  weekly  envelope.  He  is  one  of  the 
most  valuable  assets  that  the  corporation 
owns. 

That 's  the  proper  kind  of  a  job  for  a 
king.  Japan  should  send  her  Emperor 
sales-manager  over  as  soon  as  possible. 
Alphonso  of  Spain  would  find  this  a  very 
profitable  territory.  Italy's  Victor  Em- 
nanuel  had  better  pack  his  bag  and  get 
some  expense  account  blanks  printed. 

And  we,  who  have  no  kings,  should  elect 
a  half  dozen  good  looking  chaps  with  a 
Roosevelt  smile  and  a  first  class  fund  of 
funny  stories  to  show  our  customers  across 


Watching  the  Prince  II 

the  two  oceans  what  a  fine  lot  of  folks  we 
really  are. 

The  League  of  Nations  will  be  success 
ful  just  in  proportion  to  the  amount  of  in 
telligent  high-powered  salesmanship  that 
is  put  behind  it. 

Every  king  should  plan  to  live  half  the 
time  in  a  suit  case;  and  every  Prince,  no 
matter  what  his  title,  should  consider  that 
he  draws  his  salary  for  being  a  Prince  of 
Peace. 


A  GREAT  LITTLE  WORD  IS 
"  WHY  " 

A  SUCCESSFUL  man  whom  I  know 
recently  changed  from  a  business 
with  which  he  was  thoroughly  familiar  to 
a  business  that  he  knew  absolutely  nothing 
about. 

I  watched  to  see  what  he  would  do. 

For  two  solid  weeks  he  did  nothing  but 
ask  questions. 

He  took  a  train  to  Washington  to  learn 
what  information  the  government  had  on 
trade  conditions  in  the  new  field. 

He  visited  around  among  jobbers  and 
manufacturers:  he  even  went  to  the  com 
pany's  strongest  competitors. 

Everywhere  asking  questions.  It  was 
simply  amazing,  the  amount  of  useful  data 
that  he  was  able  to  dig  out. 

Curiosity  is  a  human  characteristic  that 
has  been  much  maligned.  Men  speak  of 
it  slightingly,  as  if  it  were  something  to  be 
12 


A  Great  Word  Is  "Why"      13 

ashamed  of;  a  weakness  to  be  repressed. 

My  own  idea  is  that  when  a  man  gets 
beyond  the  point  of  asking  questions,  he 
might  as  well  be  dead. 

Without  curiosity  there  would  be  no 
growth,  no  progress. 

Theirs  not  to  make  reply, 
Theirs  not  to  reason  why, 

may  be  a  good  enough  motto  for  men  who 
are  on  their  way  to  be  shot.  But  from 
such  men  expect  no  empires  to  be  builded, 
no  inventions  made,  no  great  discoveries 
brought  to  light. 

Curiosity  [the  "  Scientific  American "  once 
said]  is  the  hand-maiden  of  Science. 

No  doubt  many  a  man  before  the  time  of 
Columbus  had  remarked  the  exotic  fruits  and 
branches  tossed  up  by  the  waves  on  the  shores 
of  the  Canary  Islands.  The  natives  had  gath 
ered  them  for  generations  without  ever  so  much 
as  a  thought.  But  to  Columbus  those  strange 
gifts  of  the  sea  were  messages  sent  from  a  land 
where  no  European  ship  had  ever  touched.  Out 
of  his  wonder  about  them  came  his  voyage  to 
the  New  World. 


14        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

Then  we  have  Newton's  apple.  Things  have 
fallen  ever  since  the  universe  was  created.  And 
no  man  before  Newton  seems  ever  to  have  asked 
himself,  Why? 

Robert  Meyer,  a  ship's  surgeon  in  the  East 
Indies,  noticed  that  the  venous  blood  of  his  pa 
tients  seemed  redder  than  that  of  people  living  in 
temperate  climates.  Doubtless  other  physicians 
had  also  noticed  that  fact.  Meyer,  pondering 
on  it,  reached  the  conclusion  that  the  cause  must 
be  the  lesser  degree  of  oxidation  required  to  keep 
up  the  body  temperature  in  the  torrid  zone. 
That  thought  led  to  the  discovery  of  the  me 
chanical  theory  of  heat,  and  to  the  first  compre 
hensive  appreciation  of  the  great  law  of  the  con 
servation  of  energy. 

If  you  have  witnessed  the  gradual  prog 
ress  of  the  mind  of  a  little  baby,  you  have 
seen  a  miracle. 

And  what  is  the  golden  ladder  on  which 
the  baby  climbs  out  of  mere  consciousness 
into  intelligence? 

Curiosity  —  nothing  else.  The  con 
stant  reaching  out  for  the  untried  (even 
though  the  reaching  involves  much  up 
setting  of  flower  vases,  and  many  burned 


A  Great  Word  Is  "Why"     15 

and  bleeding  fingers) ,  the  eternal  why:  the 
unquenchable  how  and  what. 

Some  men  climb  a  little  way  up  that  lad 
der,  and  are  satisfied. 

They  reach  a  point  where  the  day's  task 
becomes  more  or  less  automatic;  where 
their  feet  follow  easily  along  a  familiar 
path.  And  they  are  content.  They 
would  not  pay  a  nickel  to  see  an  earth 
quake  :  they  would  not  open  a  new  book, 
or  stretch  their  minds  in  wonder  at  what 
lies  even  beyond  the  next  desk  above  them, 
to  say  nothing  of  what  lies  beyond  the 
stars. 

Ceasing  to  be  curious,  they  cease  to 
grow. 

For  surely  one  secret  of  genius  is  this  — 
the  ability  to  remain  interested  in  new 
things,  even  into  old  age. 

The  curiosity  of  Bluebeard's  wife  proved 
fatal,  to  be  sure ;  and  Lot's  wife,  yielding 
to  her  curiosity,  reaped  a  bitter  recom 
pense. 

One  must  use  judgment  in  the  exercise 
of  even  the  divinest  gifts. 

On  the  other  hand, 


1 6        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

Zacchaeus  he 

Did  climb   a  tree, 

His  Lord  to  see. 

And,  braving  the  ridicule  of  the  passing 
crowd  for  the  sake  of  his  curiosity,  he  was 
rewarded  with  the  secret  of  happiness  and 
everlasting  life. 


DON'T  LAY  IN  A  STOCK  OF  CA 
MOUFLAGE:  IT  HAS  DEPRE 
CIATED  BADLY  IN  VALUE 
SINCE  THE  WAR 

THE  future  of  Germany,  I  presume,  is 
no  particular  concern  of  mine.  Yet 
I  keep  thinking  what  a  tragic  position  hers 
must  be  for  many  years  to  come. 

Some  day,  soon  or  late,  Germany,  with 
the  others,  will  send  out  her  ambassadors 
to  the  world. 

He  will  come  to  Washington  —  Herr 
von  Somebody,  and,  smiling  graciously, 
will  tell  us  how  eager  his  government  is  to 
resume  friendly  relations  with  us. 

And  all  the  time  he  is  talking  it  will  be 
running  through  the  back  of  our  minds: 
'  Yes,  that  is  what  Von  Bernstorff  said,  at 
the  same  time  when  he  was  trying  to  blow 
up  our  factories,  and  league  Japan  and 
Mexico  against  us." 

Another  German  ambassador  will  go  to 
Buenos  Aires.  "  I  present  the  compli- 


i8        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

ments  of  the  German  government,"  he  will 
say. 

And  the  President  of  Argentina  will  be 
wondering  to  himself:  "  Is  this  the  same 
government  whose  envoy  suggested  that 
our  boats  be  sunk  so  as  to  leave  no  trace  ?  " 

German  salesmen  will  hurry  out  across 
the  world  with  their  sample  cases,  protest 
ing  the  value  of  their  goods. 

And  men  will  wonder  whether  the  state 
ments  behind  those  goods  are  like  the  state 
ments  made  by  the  German  government 
to  the  United  States  when  the  Sussex  was 
sunk. 

Bitter  as  the  days  are  for  Germany 
now,  the  days  to  come  will  be  more  bit 
ter. 

For  her  government  ruthlessly  tor 
pedoed  the  good  ship  Faith:  it  cut  the 
cables  of  mutual  trust  by  means  of  which 
men  have  been  accustomed  to  communicate 
with  each  other.  And  the  rest  of  the 
world  stood  aghast. 

Few  things  in  civilization  are  more  in 
spiring  than  the  slow  increase  of  men's 
faith  in  one  another. 


A  Stock  of  Camouflage         19 

When  the  Psalmist  exclaimed,  "  I  said 
in  my  haste,  All  men  are  liars,"  he  was  not 
far  wrong. 

To  lie,  to  cheat,  to  get  the  better  of  a 
competitor  by  any  hook  or  crook,  was  the 
standard  practice  of  early  business. 

The  Phoenicians  and  Greeks,  trading 
with  the  tribes  along  the  Mediterranean, 
used  to  land  on  the  shore,  pile  up  their 
goods,  and  then  put  out  a  little  way  in  their 
boats  again. 

Out  from  their  hiding  place  would  come 
the  natives  to  pile  up  beside  those  goods 
the  articles  which  they  offered  in  exchange, 
and  having  done  it  they  would  hide  them 
selves. 

Both  sides  wanted  to  do  business,  but 
neither  party  trusted  the  members  of  the 
other  enough  to  appear  beside  them  on  the 
shore. 

In  religion  as  well  as  business  the  rule  of 
fraud  was  the  accepted  rule. 

"  I  will  sacrifice  ten  heads  to  Zeus  if  I  be 
delivered  from  this  sickness,"  the  pious 
Greek  would  exclaim. 

And  being  delivered  he  would  sacrifice 


20       It's  a  Good  Old  World 

cabbage  heads  instead  of  heads  of  cattle, 
and  receive  the  congratulations  of  his 
friends  upon  the  cleverness  of  his  ruse. 

Little  by  little  the  world  has  grown 
away  from  this  kind  of  practice. 

As  the  coral  reef  grows  by  the  addition 
of  one  tiny  organism  after  another,  so  has 
Faith  grown  in  the  world  —  each  genera 
tion  raising  it  a  bit  higher  by  the  addition 
of  its  honesty  and  trust,  until  all  business 
has  come  to  be  done  on  men's  confidence  in 
each  other's  words. 

That  slow,  painfully  wrought  creation, 
Germany  with  wanton  hand  demolished. 

We  have  heard  much  talk  of  camou 
flage,  which  is  a  fancy  name  for  lying.  Be 
not  misled  by  that  euphonious  term. 

You  will  live  to  see  a  penalty  visited  on 
Germany  for  the  slaughter  of  Truth  such 
as  has  never  been  borne  by  any  people 
before. 

You  will  see  men's  word  to  each  other 
take  on  a  new  preciousness  in  the  years  to 
come,  because  of  the  terrible  price  which 
they  will  pay  who  have  disregarded  their 
word. 


21 

In  our  generation  it  will  be  true  as  it 
never  has  been  before  that  the  highest 
honors  will  be  reserved  for  the  sort  of 
man  whom  the  Bible  describes: 

The  man  who  "  sweareth  to  his  own 
hurt,  and  changeth  not." 


WE  'RE  ALL  IN  THE  SAME  BOAT: 
AND  CAN'T  GET  OUT 

AMERICA  was  founded  by  people 
who  wanted  to  get  away  from  other 
people. 

The  Pilgrim  Fathers  decided  that  they 
would  rather  run  the  risk  of  starving  to 
death  in  a  new,  clean,  unpeopled  land  than 
to  live  any  longer  with  their  neighbors. 

After  them  came  men  of  various  sorts: 
political  offenders;  Quakers  who  would 
rather  emigrate  than  fight;  Irishmen 
"  ag  'in'  the  government  ";  roving  sons  of 
settled  households. 

All  sorts  of  people,  but  driven  by  the 
same  common  motive  —  the  desire  to  live 
their  own  lives  in  their  own  way,  free  from 
the  restrictions  of  an  older  social  order. 

We  are  the  descendants  of  those  daring 
pioneers:  their  vigorous  individualism 
flows  through  our  veins. 

If,  before  the  war,  you  had  put  your 


We  're  All  in  the  Same  Boat     23 

ambition  into  words,  you  would  probably 
have  expressed  the  wish  to  be  absolutely 
independent. 

I  don't  know  what  the  war  may  have 
done  to  you,  but  to  me  it  has  revealed  this 
one  tremendous  truth:  that  there  is  not, 
and  never  will  be  again,  any  absolute  in 
dependence;  that  I,  in  my  little  home,  am 
absolutely  dependent,  to  some  degree  or 
other,  on  every  other  man  and  woman  in 
the  world. 

In  the  Balkans,  an  Austrian  prince  of 
whom  I  never  heard,  and  his  wife,  are  mur 
dered.  A  petty  far-away  event :  what  has 
it  to  do  with  me? 

Nothing,  of  course.  Nothing ; —  except 
to  throw  my  life  into  disorder,  and  change 
the  whole  thought  and  current  of  my  days. 

In  Russia  twenty  million  men  are  taken 
from  the  farms;  and,  behold,  the  loaf  of 
bread  in  my  little  home  feels  their  leaving 
and  fades  away.  Millions  of  shoes  are 
ordered  for  the  men  of  Italy:  and  the 
shoes  I  purchase  for  my  baby  cost  four 
dollars  now  instead  of  two. 

Absolute  independence !     What  a  fool- 


24       It's  a  Good  Old  World 

ish  phrase,  indeed!  The  world  has  be 
come  a  neighborhood,  and  the  welfare  of 
every  single  house  along  the  street  is  con 
ditioned  by  the  welfare  of  every  other. 

There  is  hardly  an  item  in  the  newspa 
pers  that  doesn't,  somehow  or  other,  come 
straight  home  to  me. 

I  read  that  the  railroads  are  hard  up 
and  their  stocks  and  bonds  decline.  I 
should  worry:  I  own  no  stocks  or  bonds. 

Ah,  but  don't  I,  though?  The  savings 
bank  where  my  few  dollars  lie  has  invested 
them  in  railroad  bonds;  the  life-insurance 
company  that  must  look  after  my  wife  and 
family  if  I  die  has  invested  its  funds  in 
railroad  bonds. 

Whether  I  like  it  or  not,  the  railroads 
can  not  be  hurt  without  hurting  me :  for 
better  or  for  worse,  my  prosperity  is  bound 
up  with  theirs. 

When  the  Apostle  Paul  was  being  sent 
to  Rome,  the  ship  on  which  he  sailed  was 
tossed  by  storms. 

At  the  moment  of  greatest  danger  Paul 
caught  the  sailors  taking  to  the  boats. 


We're  All  in  the  Same  Boat    ±$ 

"Stop !  "he  cried;  and  to  the  Centurion 
he  shouted: 

"  Except  these  abide  in  the  ship,  ye  can 
not  be  saved." 

To-day  the  good  ship  World  is  being 
tossed  about  by  the  greatest  storm  of  its 
existence. 

And  now,  in  the  time  of  greatest  dan 
ger,  I  see  some  signs  that  are  not  good. 
I  see  some  capitalists  taking  to  the  boats 
and  saying  to  themselves:  "We'll  pull 
out  and  play  safe,  no  matter  what  may 
happen  to  the  ship." 

I  see  some  groups  of  labor  taking  to  the 
boats  and  saying  to  themselves:  "  When 
the  ship  is  sinking  is  a  good  time  to  strike 
for  higher  pay." 

And  if  the  lesson  of  the  war  means  any 
thing,  it  seems  to  me  to  mean  just  this : 

That  the  time  has  passed  in  the  world 
when  any  single  group  of  men  can  ad 
vance  its  interests  permanently  at  the  ex 
pense  of  the  common  good. 

Unless  all  of  us,  rich  and  poor,  stick  to 
gether  in  the  ship,  then  all  of  us  are  lost. 


26       It's  a  Good  Old  World 

Individualism,  as  we  used  to  understand 
it,  is  dead. 

"  God  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  na 
tions."  The  same  great  life-giving  cur 
rent  flows  through  the  veins  of  every  class 
and  race  and  people  everywhere.  And 
the  only  way  to  advance  the  interests  of 
any  class  permanently  is  to  purify  and 
strengthen  the  stream  of  life  that  ministers 
to  all. 

That,  it  seems  to  me,  is  one  great  lesson 
of  this  war. 


"WHAT!     LITTLE  JOHNNY 
DUGAN?" 

I  VISITED  once  the  boyhood  home  of 
a  great  man. 

His  name  will  not  go  down  in  the  his 
tories,  but  he  has  made  a  high  place  for 
himself  in  his  profession;  and  in  every 
city  important  people  are  glad  to  be 
counted  among  his  friends. 

I  spoke  of  this  to  one  of  the  residents 
of  the  village  who  occupied  a  reserved  seat 
in  front  of  the  livery  stable. 

"  It  must  be  a  matter  of  great  pride  to 
your  town  to  have  produced  a  man  like 
that,"  I  said. 

"  You  mean  Joe  Hinkle?  "  he  answered. 

I  nodded,  and  he  uttered  a  scornful  lit 
tle  laugh. 

"  Folks  hereabouts  don't  think  so  much 
of  Joe  Hinkle,"  he  commented.  "  We 
never  supposed  he  'd  amount  to  anything. 
Why,  gosh,  I  knew  him  when  he  was  run- 

27 


28        It 's  a  Good  Old  World 

nin'  around  with  his  pants  held  up  by  one 
suspender." 

I  found  more  than  one  man  in  that  com 
munity  to  echo  the  sentiment.  They  could 
not  quit6  reconcile  themselves  to  the 
thought  that  a  boy  who  had  been  one  of 
themselves  should  have  travelled  so  far 
beyond  them. 

Some  years  ago  a  song  was  popular  in 
the  vaudeville  houses.  It  recounted  the 
achievement  of  a  certain  John  Dugan;  and 
after  each  stanza  the  chorus  broke  in  with 
an  incredulous  exclamation,  "  What!  Lit 
tle  Johnny  Dugan?" 

"  Little  Johnny  Dugan — that  little  fel 
low  who  used  to  be  around  here — you  don't 
mean  to  tell  me  that  he  has  been  nominated 
for  Governor;  or  elected  President  of  a 
Bank  or  called  to  the  Pastorate  of  a  great 
church.  Not  our  little  Johnny  Dugan. 
It  can't  be.  Why  we  knew  him  when  - 

The  song  reflected  accurately  the  atti 
tude  of  too  many  home  towns  toward  their 
boys.  Many  great  men  have  suffered 
from  that  attitude:  Jesus  of  Nazareth  suf 
fered,  perhaps,  most  keenly  of  all. 


"  Little  Johnny  Dugan?  ''        29 

After  He  had  begun  His  ministry;  after 
He  had  performed  a  few  miracles  in  the 
cities  near  at  hand  and  gained  a  consider 
able  reputation,  "  He  went  back  to  Naz 
areth  where  He  had  been  brought  up." 

One  can  picture  the  anticipation  with 
which  He  turned  His  face  in  that  direction. 
He  could  imagine  the  warmth  of  His  old 
neighbors'  greeting;  the  pride  they  would 
feel  in  His  success  which  had  brought 
credit  to  the  town. 

But  there  was  no  warmth.  Only  skep 
ticism  and  jealousy  and  scorn.  It  was  as 
if  their  faces  cried: 

"  We  know  you.  Why  you  're  only  the 
son  of  the  carpenter,  Joseph.  You  may 
have  fooled  them  in  Capernaum,  but  you 
can't  fool  us." 

And  there  were  those  among  them 
whose  envy  and  bitterness  would  have  led 
them  to  hurl  Him  to  death. 

There  are  two  ways  to  look  at  the  folks 
around  us,  and  particularly  the  younger 
folks. 

One  way  is  to  get  into  the  habit  of  re 
garding  them  as  just  common  people, 


30       It's  a  Good  Old  World 

destined  to  failure  or  to  only  mediocre 
things;  and  to  be  surprised  when  they  ex 
ceed  our  expectations. 

The  other  way  is  to  form  the  habit  of 
thinking  of  them  in  the  biggest  and  best 
possible  terms;  of  holding  up  the  vision  of 
large  achievement  before  them  and  letting 
them  understand  that  we  expect  them  to 
climb  high. 

Whichever  attitude  we  adopt  we  're 
bound  to  suffer  certain  disappointments; 
but  personally  I  prefer  to  be  disappointed 
by  news  of  failure  rather  than  by  news  of 
success. 

When  I  hear  that  Johnny  Dugan  has 
been  sent  to  jail  for  forgery  I  expect  to  ex 
claim  "What!  Little  Johnny  Dugan?" 

But  when  they  tell  me  that  the  Repub 
licans  have  nominated  him  for  Governor 
they  need  n't  expect  me  to  express  surprise, 
even  though  he  has  red  hair  and  never 
owned  two  suits  of  clothes  as  a  boy. 

Governor  Johnny  Dugan — "  Of  course : 
I  always  said  you  could  n't  keep  that  boy 
down." 


FIRST  HAVE  A  LOOK  AT  THE 
FIGURES 

AT  the  very  beginning  of  the  war  Lord 
Kitchener  announced  to  his  people 
that  it  would  last  for  at  least  three  years. 

I  can  remember  now  the  editorial  that 
appeared  in  one  of  the  most  sedate  and 
respected  of  our  newspapers,  taking  him  to 
task  for  his  foolish  statement.  It  was  the 
one-sided  view  of  a  purely  military  man, 
said  the  editor.  A  three-years  war  was 
unthinkable :  the  common  sense  of  the 
world  would  not  permit  it. 

Kitchener  is  dead;  but  Kitchener  was 
right. 

He  was  not  a  very  brainy  man.  On  the 
contrary,  his  teachers  found  him  rather 
dull  and  listless:  men  who  conversed  with 
him  were  embarrassed  by  his  mental  slow 
ness.  I  will  venture  to  say  that  the  editor 
who  wrote  that  article  criticizing  him  was 
far  more  than  his  equal  in  all-round  intelli 
gence.  But  Kitchener's  teachers  noted 
31 


32        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

one  bright  spot  in  his  otherwise  indifferent 
school-record :  he  was  very  good  at  mathe 
matics. 

I  sometimes  think  there  should  have 
been  another  Beatitude:  Blessed  are  the 
mathematicians,  for  they  shall  inherit  the 
earth. 

It  is  the  nature  of  us  common  folks  to 
live  on  hope  instead  of  facts.  The  eyes 
that  we  turn  to  the  future  are  fitted  with 
rose-tinted  glasses.  We  see  coming  events 
shaping  themselves  as  we  would  like  to 
have  them  shape  themselves.  The  thing 
that  should  be  is  the  thing  that  will  be,  in 
all  our  prophecies. 

Those  cynical  gentlemen  who  make  their 
living  on  the  stock-exchange  recognize 
that  quality  in  us  and  trade  upon  it.  The 
public  is  always  "  bullish,"  in  their  par 
lance  —  by  which  they  mean  that  every 
common  man  of  us  believes  that  the  shares 
of  stock  which  he  has  bought  are  sure  some 
day  to  sell  higher.  We  hold  on  to  our 
shares,  disregarding  danger-signals,  and 
long  after  the  professional  has  begun  to 
sell,  we  are  buying  still. 


First  Look  at  the  Figures       33 

One  reason  why  the  prophet  is  never 
honored  in  his  own  country  is  that  the 
true  prophet  must  so  often  foretell  unpleas 
ant  things ;  and  the  world  does  not  like  to 
face  unpleasant  things. 

Hope  springs  eternal  in  the  human  breast; 
Man  never  is,  but  always  to  be  blest. 

No  man  among  us  would  want  to  see 
that  divine  spark  of  hopefulness  lost  out 
of  human  character.  Nevertheless  in  our 
optimism  we  would  do  well  to  remember 
this  —  that  hope  based  on  hard  facts,  on 
a  willingness  to  face  the  truth,  is  a  thou 
sand  times  more  useful  than  hope  based  on 
nothing  but  other  hopes. 

"Read  Luke  xiv:3i,"  wired  Cecil 
Rhodes  to  Dr.  Jameson  before  the  latter 
set  out  on  his  celebrated  raid. 

And  Jameson,  calling  for  a  Bible,  turned 
to  that  verse  and  read: 

Or  what  king,  going  to  make  war  against  an 
other  king,  sitteth  not  down  first  and  consulteth 
whether  he  be  able  with  ten  thousand  to  meet 
him  that  cometh  against  him  with  twenty  thou 
sand? 


34       It's  a  Good  Old  World 

It  is  a  good  verse  to  read  occasionally  in 
days  like  these. 

Apply  it  to  your  own  affairs.  Have 
you  had  occasion  lately  to  take  account  of 
stock?  Do  you  know  in  black  and  white 
just  what  the  chances  for  you  and  against 
you  are? 

Suppose  to-day  you  figure  them  up  care 
fully  and  courageously,  giving  the  odds 
against  you  full  credit  for  their  strength. 
If  you  are  the  man  you  ought  to  be,  you 
will  not  be  dismayed,  no  matter  how  strong 
the  adverse  figures  may  appear. 

Indeed,  you  will  find  fresh  courage  in 
the  fact  that  you  have  taken  the  full  meas 
ure  of  your  enemies  —  that  the  power 
which  you  present  against  them  is  made 
up  not  merely  of  hope,  but  of  hope  rein 
forced  and  made  vital  by  fact. 


WHY  NOT  USE  OUR  ISLAND 
OF  YAP? 

OVER  at  Ellis  Island  they  are  holding 
a  big  catch  of  anarchists  and  Bolshe 
viks,  waiting  for  a  boat  to  Russia  whose 
owners  don't  care  what  kind  of  cargo  it 
carries. 

They  are  not  an  attractive  looking 
crowd. 

Most  of  them  were  poor,  oppressed  ref 
ugees  fleeing  from  government  or  hunger 
when  they  came  to  us.  We  took  them  in, 
warmed  them,  fed  them,  gave  them  more 
money  than  they  had  ever  had  before; 
and  while  we  were  busy  in  the  front  yard, 
beating  off  a  mob  of  Germans,  they  stayed 
behind  in  our  home  and  plotted  to  destroy 
the  furniture,  turn  out  the  members  of  the 
family  and  keep  the  house  and  all  our  pos 
sessions  for  themselves. 

That   sort   of   ingratitude  —  the   utter 

35 


36        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

lack  of  any  moral  sense  —  is  peculiarly  ir 
ritating.  So  our  government  thinks  it 
wise  to  send  them  back  where  they  came 
from  lest  we  might  some  day  lose  our 
self-control  and  be  tempted  to  do  them 
bodily  injury. 

It"  is  one  solution  of  the  situation,  but 
not  a  very  satisfactory  one.  They  will  be 
just  as  bad  neighbors  in  any  other  country 
and  there  is  always  the  chance  that  they 
may  escape  and  appear  in  our  midst  again. 

A  far  better  way  would  be  to  deal  with 
them  as  Milton  tells  us  the  first  Bolshe 
viks  were  dealt  with. 

Things  in  Heaven  were  going  pretty 
well  when  a  crowd  of  ungrateful  spirits, 
headed  by  a  gentleman  named  Satan,  de 
cided  to  overthrow  the  government  and 
seize  the  kingdom  for  themselves. 

They  were  defeated  but  no  attempt  was 
made  to  imprison  them. 

Instead  they  were  given  a  secluded 
place  all  their  own  and  allowed  to  do  with 
it  as  they  would. 

It,  was  an  absolutely  free  place.  No 
one  had  to  work;  all  authority  was  re- 


Our  Island  of  Yap  37 

moved;  there  were  none  of  the  improve 
ments  that  had  existed  in  Heaven. 

Of  course  they  made  a  very  distressing 
discovery:  they  found  that  the  worst  pun 
ishment  that  could  be  visited  upon  them 
was  the  necessity  of  living  with  themselves. 

"Which  way  I  fly  is  Hell;  myself  am 
Hell,"  Satan  exclaimed.  He  would  gladly 
have  made  any  surrender  to  get  back  to 
the  Heaven  whose  government  he  had 
sought  to  overthrow.  But  the  gate  was 
closed. 

I  understand  we  received  a  prize  at  the 
Paris  peace  conference  named  the  Island 
of  Yap.  I  have  never  seen  it;  I  do  not 
know  exactly  where  it  is.  But  it  sounds 
like  a  fine  place  to  send  Bolsheviks. 

Why  not  buy  out  the  present  inhabitants 
and  turn  the  Island  over  to  the  folks  who 
don't  like  the  way  we  run  things  here  and 
are  sure  they  could  do  it  so  much  better? 

Let  them  organize  to  suit  themselves. 
Have  no  house-rules  except  the  rule  that 
no  member  may  leave  the  island. 

That  seems  to  have  been  the  divine  plan 
of  dealing  with  their  forebears.  When 


38        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

they  rebelled  against  the  Heaven  God  was 
conducting,  He  gave  them  a  Heaven  of 
their  own. 

And  they  promptly  made  it  Hell. 


THE  SECOND  MILE 

THERE  is  a  strange  fact  about  busi 
ness  that  I  have  noticed  many  times. 

It  may  be  expressed  in  this  apparently 
senseless  phrase: 

A  little  too  much  is  just  enough. 

A  young  man  came  to  me  yesterday  to 
tell  me  his  boss  had  been  fired. 

I  was  sorry  for  the  boss;  glad  for  the 
young  man;  and  glad  for  myself.  It 
proved  me,  for  once,  a  good  prophet. 

For  the  same  young  man  had  met  me 
three  months  ago  and  complained  of  his 
lot.  His  boss  was  loafing  on  the  job,  he 
said,  leaving  all  the  work  of  the  depart 
ment  to  him.  "  He  gets  the  money,  and 
I  do  the  work,"  the  young  man  exclaimed. 
"What  shall  I  do?" 

I  told  him  to  do  more  work. 

"  But  I  'm  doing  too  much  already!  "  he 
cried. 

"  I  know  it,"  I  said.  "  Do  more.  Do 
so  much  more  that  everybody  in  the  office 

39 


40 

will  notice  it.     Then  see  what  happens." 

Well,  it  happened.  The  boss  is  fired: 
and  he  has  the  boss's  job. 

I  read  a  great  deal  of  biography:  it  is 
my  favorite  kind  of  reading.  And  noth 
ing  impresses  me  so  much  as  to  see  how 
hard  the  great  men  of  the  world  have 
worked. 

Almost  without  exception,  they  have 
done  more  work  than  they  needed  to  do: 
more  work  that  the  average  man  would 
have  been  willing  to  do :  more  than 
enough. 

Take  this  extract  from  a  book  recently- 
published  —  the  life  of  Delane,  the  great 
editor  of  the  London  "  Times." 

He  read  and  edited  himself  everything  that 
was  to  appear  in  the  paper  next  morning  — 
telegrams,  correspondents'  letters,  the  reports  of 
Parliament.  He  selected  the  letters  addressed  to 
the  "  Times  "  that  were  to  be  published:  he  chose 
the  books  that  were  to  be  reviewed :  he  was 
scrupulous  as  to  the  way  in  which  even  small 
matters  of  social  interest  were  announced  and 
handled.  This  method  of  editing  was  infinitely 
laborious.  Even  when  the  "  Times  "  was  much 


The  Second  Mile  41 

less  than  its  present  size,  the  task  of  reading,  cor 
recting,  and  controlling  from  forty  to  fifty  col 
umns  of  new  matter  every  night  was  immense. 
But  Delane  never  shrank  from  it. 

I  know  editors  getting  fifty  dollars  a 
week  who  would  consider  themselves 
abused  beyond  endurance  if  any  one  sug 
gested  a  day's  work  like  Delane's. 

Doubtless  there  were  plenty  of  editors 
in  London  in  Delane's  own  day  who 
thought  him  a  fool  to  work  so  hard.  // 
there  were,  we  do  not  know  their  names. 

Posterity  seldom  does  know  the  names 
of  the  men  who  are  careful  not  to  work  too 
hard. 

Dickens  began  life  as  a  stenographer. 

How  hard  I  worked  at  that  tremendous  short 
hand  and  all  the  improvements  pertaining  to  it! 
[he  exclaimed].  I  will  only  add  to  what  I  have 
already  written  of  my  perseverance  at  that  time 
of  my  life  and  the  patient,  continuous  energy 
which  then  began  to  be  matured  in  me,  and  which 
I  know  to  be  the  strong  point  of  my  character,  if 
I  have  any  strength  at  all,  that  there,  on  looking 
back,  I  find  the  source  of  my  success. 

Bishop  Butler  worked  twenty  years  on 


42       It's  a  Good  Old  World 

his  "  Analogy,"  and  then  wanted  to  burn 
it  because  he  thought  it  not  good  enough. 
George  Eliot  read  more  than  a  thousand 
volumes  before  she  began  to  write  "  Dan 
iel  Deronda." 

Patient,  continuous,  ceaseless  work. 
What  the  ordinary  writer  would  have 
called  too  much  the  extraordinary  writer 
thought  hardly  enough. 

There  is  a  verse  in  that  great  text-book 
on  modern  business,  the  Bible,  which 
sums  it  all  up  : 

"  And  whosoever  shall  compel  thee  to 
go  a  mile,  go  with  him  twain." 

Whosoever  hires  you  to  work  eight 
hours,  take  advantage  of  him  by  working 
a  little  longer:  whosoever  compels  you  to 
do  a  certain  task,  do  more  than  you  con 
tract  to  do. 

It 's  the  second  mile  that  counts.  All 
biography  is  a  record  of  that  truth:  all 
business  experience  attests  it. 

The  work  that  no  man  compels  you  to 
do  is  the  work  for  which  the  world  pays 
most. 

A  little  too  much  is  just  enough. 


"  WHICH  KNEW  NOT  JOSEPH  " 

IT  'S  a  very  old,  old  story;  but  it  never 
needed  retelling  so  much  as  in  this 
present  hour. 

His  name  was  Joseph,  and  he  was  car 
ried  away  from  home,  and  found  himself 
in  Egypt,  a  strange  new  land. 

Because  he  was  good-looking,  and  intel 
ligent,  and  a  hard  worker,  he  rose  rapidly 
until  he  became  prime  minister.  Except 
the  king  there  was  no  other  man  in  Egypt 
more  influential  or  more  celebrated. 

His  relatives  learned  of  his  rise  with 
interest.  They  followed  into  Egypt,  and 
with  his  help  they,  too,  prospered  and  were 
likewise  influential. 

It  looked  as  though  they  were  perma 
nently  provided  for;  as  though  nothing 
could  happen  to  dislodge  them. 

But  in  a  single  generation ;  yes,  in  a  little 
fraction  of  a  generation,  the  unbelievable 
occurred.  The  people  who  were  so  con 
tented,  so  free  from  all  concern,  were 

43 


44        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

hurled  from  their  high  position  into  the 
bitterness  of  slavery. 

The  thing  that  had  happened  to  them 
is  recorded  in  a  single  sentence.  Joseph 
died. 

"  And  there  arose  a  new  king  in  Egypt, 
which  knew  not  Joseph." 

Only  a  few  years  since  Joseph's  death  — 
and  the  new  King  knew  nothing  about  him 
and  cared  less.  His  name  had  been  a  by 
word  in  the  ancient  world :  but  a  few  peo 
ple  passed  away,  some  new  ones  were  born, 
and  presto,  he  was  as  much  forgotten  as 
though  he  had  never  lived. 

I  would  print  that  story  large  upon  the 
office  walls  of  thousands  of  men  in  these 
changing  days. 

On  the  walls  of  business  men,  for  ex 
ample. 

Only  last  week  I  talked  with  a  man 
who  told  me  that  his  company  controlled 
seventy-five  percent  of  the  business  in  its 
line  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago. 

Today  the  company  controls  less  than 
twenty  percent.  The  men  who  owned  it 
had  grown  self-satisfied;  and  almost  over 


"  Which  Knew  Not  Joseph  "      45 

night  a  new,  virile  competitor  arose,  and 
with  advertising  pushed  the  older  company 
from  its  place  of  power. 

Our  fathers  knew  that  older  company 
well;  but  you  and  I  have  hardly  heard  its 
name. 

A  new  generation  has  arisen,  a  new  king, 
which  knows  not  Joseph. 

I  would  print  it  on  the  walls  of  writers, 
and  of  preachers,  and  of  law-makers,  and 
of  every  man  who  wants  to  see  the  race 
progress. 

You  think  that  you  have  told  your  story 
to  the  world,  and  that  therefore  your  task 
is  done.  I  tell  you  that  over  night  a  new 
world  has  been  born  that  has  never  heard 
your  story. 

You  think  because  the  Gospel  has  been 
preached  for  1,900  years  that  by  that 
preaching  the  race  must  automatically  be 
saved. 

Every  sermon  preached  as  long  ago 
as  yesterday  is  already  dead. 

A  little  slackening  of  the  effort;  a  little 
moment  of  self-satisfaction,  and  all  the 
momentum  gained  by  years  of  work  is  lost. 


46       //  's  a  Good  Old  World 

For  the  world  moves  swifter  today  than 
ever  before  in  its  history.  And  even  in 
the  very  instant  of  your  self-content,  the 
silence  is  shattered  by  the  trampling  of 
new  feet. 

Behold  another  generation  has  come,  a 
new  king  who  knows  no  precedents,  in 
whose  experience  nothing  is  fixed: 

A  king  in  whose  sight  yesterday  has  been 
cold  a  thousand  years;  a  king  which  knows 
not  Joseph. 


HE  CALLED  THE  PRESIDENT 
"  CHARLEY  " 

SOME  weeks  ago  I  left  New  York, 
where  the  talk  was  all  of  labor 
troubles  and  industrial  unrest.  Employ 
ers  were  locking  the  doors  against  their 
workmen;  and  labor  leaders  were  calling 
out  their  followers  on  strike. 

I  went  up  into  the  middle  of  the  State  to 
an  industrial  city  of  twenty-two  thousand 
people. 

The  vice-president  of  one  of  the  large 
plants  there  took  me  around  in  his  auto 
mobile. 

"  Any  labor  trouble?  "  I  asked. 

"  Not  a  bit." 

"  Ever  had  a  strike?  " 

"  Not  in  seventy-five  years.  Why,  if 
we  did  n't  read  the  newspapers,  we  would 
hardly  know  what  the  word  means." 

Later  in  the  afternoon  I  sat  in  the  office 
of  the  president  of  another  factory  in  the 

47 


48        //  's  a  Good  Old  World 

same  city.  It  is  no  small  plant ;  the  owners 
are  just  breaking  ground  for  an  addition 
that  will  cost  more  than  a  million  dollars. 
Only  one  other  company  in  its  line  does  a 
larger  annual  business. 

As  I  sat  talking  with  the  president,  the 
door  opened  and  the  shipping-clerk  came 
In. 

"  Shall  we  prepay  that  shipment  to 
Louisville,  Charley?"  the  shipping-clerk 
asked. 

"  We  will  this  time,  Al,"  the  president 
replied. 

I  gasped.  A  concern  whose  goods  are 
sold  from  coast  to  coast,  a  concern  whose 
owners  can  build  a  million-dollar  addition 
without  asking  any  outside  help !  And 
the  shipping-clerk  calls  the  president 
"Charley!" 

In  that  instant  a  big  light  dawned  for 
me.  I  got  a  picture  of  a  social  organiza 
tion  far  different  from  anything  we  resi 
dents  of  the  big  cities  know. 

Charley,  the  president,  owns  his  own 
home;  so  does  Al,  the  shipping-clerk. 
Charley  raises  vegetables  in  the  back-yard, 


He  Called  the  President       49 

to  cut  down  his  cost  of  living.  So  also 
does  Al. 

Charley's  children  go  to  the  same  school 
with  Al's.  Al's  wife  rides  out  occasion 
ally  with  Charley's  in  the  automobile. 
And  Charley's  wife  calls  on  Al's  when 
there  is  a  new  baby,  or  one  of  the  older 
children  is  sick. 

No  jealousy,  no  suspicion.  No  profi 
teering  on  one  side,  or  holding  back  on  the 
other.  The  company  is  our  company,  not 
the  company,  to  every  man  and  woman 
in  it. 

From  our  present  social  troubles  we  are 
bound  to  reap  some  very  large  rewards. 
The  troubles  look  black  enough  at  times. 
It  seems  to  have  been  decreed  by  Provi 
dence  that  the  process  of  birth  should  never 
take  place  without  the  accompaniment  of 
suffering  and  pain  and  tears.  And  it  is  a 
process  of  birth,  not  of  death,  that  we  are 
passing  through  in  this  reconstruction 
period.  Out  of  it  is  going  to  come  a  new 
world  —  a  world  in  which  things  will  be 
better  for  the  average  man  than  they  ever 
were  before. 


50        It 's  a  Good  Old  World 

One  of  the  developments,  in  my  judg 
ment,  will  be  the  removal  of  a  good  many 
industries  from  the  smoke-laden  air  of  the 
cities  to  the  pure  air  of  the  country. 

Where  every  family  can  have  a  home 
and  a  garden,  and  a  man  is  a  personality  to 
his  employer,  not  a  number. 

Where  it  is  harder  to  forget  that  the 
business  of  industry  is  to  create  human 
happiness  as  well  as  to  multiply  wealth. 

Where  men  stand  side  by  side  in  mutual 
appreciation  and  respect  — 

And  even  a  shipping-clerk  named  "  Al  " 
can  call  the  president  "  Charley." 


RECENTLY  a  young  man  wrote  to 
ask  me  how  he  could  borrow  a  sum 
of  money  for  a  certain  purpose. 

And  I  suggested  that  before  he  sought 
to  borrow  any  money,  he  should  read  the 
biographies  of  Benjamin  Disraeli  and  Bal 
zac. 

I  would  advise  any  young  man  who  con 
templates  running  in  debt  to  read  these  two 
books. 

Here  is  a  note  from  Disraeli's  diary,  De 
cember  5,  1836.  What  a  tragic  vision  it 
presents  —  one  of  the  most  brilliant  men 
in  England  hesitating  to  accept  a  dinner- 
invitation  for  fear  of  being  arrested  for 
debt!  He  writes: 

"Our  county  Conservative  Dinner,  which 

will  be  the  most  important   assembly  of 

its  kind  yet  held,  takes  place  on  the  9th 

inst.     I  have  been  requested  to  move  the 

Si 


52        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

principal  toast  '  The  House  of  Lords.'  I 
trust  there  is  no  danger  of  my  being 
nabbed,  .  .  .  inasmuch  as,  in  all  proba 
bility,  I  am  addressing  my  future  constit 
uents." 

In  his  later  years  Disraeli  wrote  these 
words: 

''  If  youth  but  knew  the  fatal  misery 
they  are  entailing  on  themselves  the  mo 
ment  they  accept  a  pecuniary  credit  to 
which  they  are  not  entitled,  how  they 
would  start  in  their  career!  How  pale 
they  would  turn !  How  they  would  trem 
ble  and  clasp  their  hands  in  agony  at  the 
precipice  on  which  they  are  disporting! 
Debt  .  .  .  hath  a  small  beginning  but  a 
giant's  growth  and  strength.  When  we 
make  the  monster,  we  make  our  master, 
who  haunts  us  at  all  hours  and  shakes  his 
whip  of  scorpions  forever  in  our  sight. 
Faustus,  when  he  signed  the  bond  with 
blood,  did  not  secure  a  doom  more  terrific." 

How  many  hours  of  bitter  agony  and 
regret  are  mirrored  in  that  paragraph! 

Balzac's  life  is  even  more  pitiable.  I 
know  of  no  more  pathetic  picture  in  all 


A  Course  of  Reading  53 

history  than  that  of  this  great  genius,  toil 
ing  relentlessly  at  his  desk  from  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  adding  story  to 
story  and  novel  to  novel  —  afraid  to  pause 
for  even  a  single  hour  lest  his  creditors 
close  in  upon  him. 

There  are,  of  course,  exceptional  cir 
cumstances  under  which  a  young  man  is 
justified  in  running  into  debt.  His  debt 
may  secure  an  education,  for  example,  and 
so  add  greatly  to  his  earning  power.  But 
be  very  slow  to  assume  that  your  circum 
stances  are  exceptional. 

Before  you  decide  that  you  are  justified 
in  running  into  debt,  read  the  lives  of  these 
two  men,  and  the  lives  of  Cicero,  William 
IV,  Bret  Harte,  Eugene  Field  and  Mark 
Twain.  They  spent  the  best  years  of  their 
lives  in  paying  for  dead  horses.  Each 
managed  to  be  great  in  spite  of  constant, 
irritating  financial  worry. 

But  the  world  will  never  know  how  much 
greater  they  might  have  been  had  their 
minds  been  wholly  freed  for  constructive 
work  instead  of  burdened  with  the  misery 
of  debt. 


ON  MEETING  AN  INSIG 
NIFICANT  MAN 

WE  had  invited  some  friends  to  spend 
the  evening  with  us ;  and  when  they 
arrived,  he  was  with  them.  Rather  short, 
and  almost  bald  he  was,  and  his  hand, 
when  he  offered  it,  was  soft  and  ladylike. 
Altogether,  he  seemed  to  me  about  as  in 
significant  a  bit  of  humanity  as  I  had  re 
cently  encountered. 

I  rather  resented  the  fact  that  he  had 
come  along  to  destroy  the  balance  of  the 
party;  and  for  some  time  we  quite  ignored 
him  in  the  conversation.  Then,  out  of 
common  politeness,  we  addressed  some 
question  to  him  about  the  war.  And  an 
amazing  thing  took  place.  The  little  man 
spoke  up  with  an  amount  of  information 
and  a  calm  confidence  that  were  astonish 
ing. 

We  led  him  on  from  point  to  point;  and 
always  he  answered  modestly,  but  with 

54 


An  Insignificant  Man          55 

facts  that  gripped  our  interest.  From  that 
moment  the  conversation  of  the  evening 
centered  about  him. 

"  Who  is  he?  "  I  asked  my  friend  in  a 
whisper  as  he  prepared  to  go. 

And  he  answered:  "Why,  don't  you 
know?  That  is  Jones,  one  of  the  greatest 
chemists  in  this  country.  The  Govern 
ment  sent  for  him  when  war  was  declared, 
and  he  probably  knows  as  much  about  the 
real  inside  history  of  the  past  two  years 
as  any  man  in  the  United  States." 

I  only  hoped,  as  I  bade  him  good  night, 
that  he  had  not  guessed,  from  my  earlier 
attitude,  how  very  insignificant  and  un 
worthy  of  attention  I  had  considered  him. 

Once  upon  a  time  an  efficiency  expert 
boasted  to  me  that  a  single  glance  was 
enough  to  form  his  judgment  of  a  man. 
No  matter  what  the  circumstances  of  the 
meeting,  he  said,  he  could  rely  upon  his 
first  impression. 

Perhaps  he  was  right;  but  I  doubt  it. 
Would  he,  I  wonder,  have  recognized  in 
the  shabby  little  lieutenant  named  Bona 
parte,  wandering  the  streets  of  Paris,  the 


56        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

man  of  destiny  who  was  to  conquer 
Europe? 

If  he  had  stood  on  the  sidewalk  of  Phila 
delphia  when  a  crude  lad  walked  by  with 
a  loaf  of  bread  under  each  arm,  would  he 
have  seen  beneath  that  rough  attire  the 
philosopher  and  statesman  Franklin? 

What  about  U.  S.  Grant,  the  middle- 
aged  failure,  delivering  wood  in  St.  Louis 
—  unkempt,  unshaven,  regarded  by  his 
neighbors  as  a  ne'er-do-well? 

God  sends  great  souls  into  the  world 
clothed  oftentimes  in  curious  attire.  And 
one  misses  much  good-fellowship  who 
thinks  that  from  what  men  seem  to  be  he 
can  determine  offhand  what  they  are. 

Along  a  country  road  in  Palestine  a 
group  of  tired  men  walked  one  afternoon 
toward  sundown. 

"  Go  ahead  to  the  next  village,"  said 
their  Leader,  "  and  see  if  there  we  may  find 
a  place  to  sleep." 

After  a  little  time  they  returned  to  say 
that  the  village  would  not  receive  them. 

It  was  a  busy  day  in  the  village;  the  in 
habitants  were  preoccupied  and  proud : 


An  Insignificant  Man  57 

what  were  a  few  travel-stained  pilgrims  to 
them!  They  trusted  their  first  impres 
sion;  it  was  a  group  of  weary  fishermen 
whom  they  supposed  they  had  refused. 

And  so  they  lost  for  themselves  and 
their  village  forever  the  opportunity  to  en 
tertain  His  disciples  and  their  Lord. 


IT  'S  A  MOVING  PICTURE  WORLD, 

AND  THE  FILM  CHANGES 

EVERY  FEW  MINUTES 

IF  some  one  had  asked  me  on  a  certain 
day  in  1915  to  name  three  permanent 
human  institutions,  I  might  have  answered: 

The  Papacy:  the  Bank  of  England:  the 
Czar  of  Russia. 

Maybe,  on  consideration,  I  could  have 
given  a  better  answer;  but  offhand  that 
sounds  fairly  reasonable. 

At  nine  o'clock  that  morning,  so  far  as 
we  knew,  the  Czar  of  all  the  Russias  was 
as  firm  on  his  throne  as  Gibraltar.  In  my 
morning  paper  at  least,  there  was  no  hint 
to  the  contrary. 

And  at  six  o'clock  we  opened  our  eve 
ning  papers  to  discover  him  a  prisoner,  and 
Russia  on  the  threshold  of  immediate  de 
mocracy. 

It  was  the  kind  of  mental  shock  that  is 
good  for  us:  the  war  was  full  of  such 
shocks. 

58 


A  Moving  Picture  World      59 

We  learned  from  it,  in  more  dramatic 
fashion  than  ever  before,  this  very  neces 
sary  truth  —  that  nothing  is  fixed,  nothing 
is  sure,  nothing  is  changeless,  in  this  whole 
wide  world. 

A  man  told  me  the  other  day  about  a 
conversation  he  once  held  with  Jay  Gould. 

Gould  got  up  from  his  desk,  walked  over 
to  the  wall,  and  pointing  to  a  map  of  the 
United  States,  put  his  finger  on  the  Mis 
souri  Pacific  Railroad. 

"  There,"  he  said,  "  is  the  finest  railroad 
property  in  the  United  States." 

That  conversation  took  place  only  about 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  A  few  months 
ago  the  common  stock  of  the  Missouri  Pa 
cific  sold  down  to  something  like  four  dol 
lars,  and  the  holders  of  it  paid  an  assess 
ment  of  fifty  dollars  a  share  to  rehabilitate 
the  road. 

So  confident  were  the  shrewd  investors 
of  New  England  in  the  everlasting  pros 
perity  of  the  New  York,  New  Haven  & 
Hartford  that  they  invested  the  funds  of 
widows  and  orphans  and  institutions  in  its 
stock.  Ten  years  ago  there  was  not  a 


60        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

banker  in  the  United  States  who  would 
have  believed  that  stock  could  ever  crum 
ble  away. 

But  the  impossible  happened :  the 
change  came. 

Suppose  a  man  graduating  from  college 
at  any  time  in  the  past  twenty-five  years 
had  wanted  to  pick  out  an  absolutely  safe 
profession, —  one  into  which  no  unexpected 
change  could  possibly  enter, —  what  pro 
fession  would  he  have  chosen? 

Teaching  in  a  college  or  university,  prob 
ably. 

University  professors  are  almost  never 
discharged:  they  are  sure  of  work  as  long 
as  children  continue  to  be  born  into  the 
world;  and  in  old  age  they  are  taken  care 
of  by  Carnegie  pensions. 

So  he  might  have  argued  to  himself. 

But,  behold,  there  comes  a  world  war, 
taking  away  from  a  quarter  to  two-thirds 
of  the  students  of  our  colleges  with  their 
tuition  fees.  The  war  ends;  the  students 
return;  but  the  dollar  has  so  shrunk  in  pur 
chasing  power  that  every  college  professor 


A  Moving  Picture  World      61 

in  the  land  finds  his  secure  living  made 
suddenly  precarious. 

When  Darwin  was  making  his  studies 
in  evolution,  working  out  the  law  by  which 
lower  forms  changed  through  the  ages  into 
higher,  he  came  across  certain  forms  of 
life  that,  for  some  reason  or  other,  had 
been  incapable  of  change. 

Their  environment  had  shifted,  but  they 
failed  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  new  en 
vironment. 

So  the  tide  of  progress  moved  on  and 
left  them,  stranded  wrecks  on  the  shore. 

The  business  world  is  full  of  men  of  that 
sort.  They  say  to  themselves:  "  I  know 
this  job  well  enough  to  hold  it  the  rest  of 
my  life.  I  can  afford  to  take  things  a  lit 
tle  easier.  Nothing  can  happen  now  to 
change  my  life." 

So,  gradually,  they  lose  the  power  of 
adaptation,  which  is  the  power  of  growth. 

They  are  perfectly  typified  by  the  man 
described  in  the  Bible,  who  said  to  his  soul : 

"  Soul,  thou  hast  much  goods  laid  up 
for  many  years :  take  thine  ease." 


62       It  'j 

That  night  he  died. 

The  one  change  which  he  had  not  fore 
seen  came  to  him  —  and  found  him  un 
prepared. 


ARE  YOU  INDUSTRIOUS,  OR 
MERELY  BUSY? 

1  PRESUME  the  stage  is  partly  re 
sponsible  for  it.  Or  perhaps  the  ear 
nest  young  novelists  who  live  in  small 
towns  and  write  novels  about  American 
business. 

Anyway,  some  one  or  something  has 
given  us  a  portrait  of  the  Successful  Ameri 
can  Business  Man  that  is  unlike  any  suc 
cessful  American  business  man  whom  I 
have  ever  happened  to  meet. 

Our  portrait  represents  him  as  snapping 
orders  through  a  telephone  while  he 
munches  his  breakfast,  stopping  his  auto 
mobile  half  way  downtown  to  get  off  a 
couple  of  telegrams,  rushing  through  a 
breathless  day  at  the  office,  and  dictating 
letters  in  his  limousine  all  the  way  home. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  nothing  has  im 
pressed  me  as  more  characteristic  of  really 
big  men  than  a  certain  suggestion  of 
leisure,  a  kind  of  elevation  above  the  lit- 
63 


64 

tie  maelstrom  of  detail  in  which  the  aver 
age  man  is  caught  up  and  whirled  through 
the  day. 

He  does  big  business  without  appearing 
too  busy.  You  know,  from  the  record  of 
his  achievements,  that  he  must  get  through 
an  enormous  amount  of  work  in  a  day:  yet 
there  seems  to  be  nothing  on  his  mind, 
when  you  meet  him,  but  the  subject  you 
have  come  to  discuss:  and  he  apparently 
has  all  the  time  that  is  needed  to  discuss  it. 

I  talked  one  day  with  President  Wilson. 
His  desk  was  piled  with  commissions  and 
bills  waiting  to  be  signed;  it  was  a  time  of 
great  perplexity  in  foreign  relations.  I 
had  rather  expected  to  be  warned  by  his 
secretary  that  I  must  leave  in  ten  minutes, 
and  to  have  those  ten  minutes  frequently 
interrupted. 

But  the  President  talked  for  forty  min 
utes.  He  pushed  back  from  his  desk  and 
spoke  of  this  thing  and  that,  with  no  evi 
dence  of  preoccupation,  no  more  sign  of 
being  rushed  or  ridden  by  his  job,  than  as 
if  we  were  out  fishing  together,  with  the 
whole  day  before  us. 


Are  You  Industrious?  65 

Lincoln,  of  course,  is  the  supreme  exam 
ple  of  the  really  great  man's  ability  to 
carry  his  burden  easily,  with  no  suggestion 
of  desperate  haste. 

The  members  of  his  Cabinet  never  grew 
fully  reconciled  to  his  habit  of  stopping  on 
his  way  to  Cabinet  meetings  to  play  a  mo 
ment  with  Tad  and  his  goat. 

They  were  so  terribly  busy  themselves 
—  they  could  not  understand  a  man  who 
could  carry  a  greater  load,  and  yet  have 
plenty  of  time  to  be  friendly  and  good- 
natured  and  sympathetic. 

Extreme  busyness  is  a  symptom  of  deficient  vi 
tality  [says  Stevenson]  ;  while  a  faculty  for  idle 
ness  implies  a  catholic  appetite  and  a  strong  sense 
of  personal  identity.  There  are  dead-alive,  hack 
neyed  people  about,  who  are  scarcely  conscious  of 
living  except  in  the  exercise  of  some  conventional 
occupation.  Bring  those  fellows  into  the  coun 
try,  or  set  them  aboard  ship,  and  you  will  see  how 
they  pine  for  their  desk  or  their  study.  They 
can  not  be  idle.  Their  nature  is  not  generous 
enough,  and  they  pass  in  a  sort  of  coma  those 
hours  which  are  not  dedicated  to  furious  moiling 
in  the  gold  mill.  When  they  do  not  require  to 


66       It 's  a  Good  Old  World 

go  to  the  office,  they  are  not  hungry  and  have  no 
mind  to  drink;  the  whole  breathing  world  is  a 
blank  to  them.  This  does  not  appear  to  me  as 
being  Success  in  Life. 

Life  is  a  good  deal  like  a  journey  on  a 
train. 

Most  of  us  go  through  with  it  huddled 
in  the  same  seat,  our  noses  buried  in  our 
work. 

And  once  in  a  while  we  glance  up  rather 
enviously  at  the  big,  genial-looking  man 
across  the  aisle. 

He,  too,  works.  But  every  time  the 
train  stops  to  change  engines,  he  seems  to 
find  time  to  get  out  for  a  little  stroll  on 
the  platform.  His  work  has  not  pre 
vented  him  from  having  some  fun  with 
his  kid,  and  learning  a  good  deal  about  the 
country  through  which  he  is  passing,  and 
making  some  good  friends  on  the  trip. 

We  ask  who  he  is,  and  learn  that  he  is  a 
Captain  of  Industry. 

It  is  an  appropriate  title.  He  captains 
his  industry  —  commands  it:  it  does  not 
command  him.  He  organizes  it,  and  fits 
it  into  its  proper  place  in  his  scheme  of 


Are  You  Industrious?          67 

life.  He  does  not  let  it  interfere  with 
the  important  business  of  being  sometimes 
idle. 

He  has  learned  to  be  effective  and  still 
unhurried. 

To  be  industrious  without  being  busy. 


IF  YOU  ARE  NOT  TOO  CAREFUL 
WHO  GETS  THE  CREDIT 

YESTERDAY    a    man    travelled    two 
miles  out  of  his  way,  and  wasted  two 
hours  of  his  time,  in  order  to  call  on  me 
and  make  a  complaint. 

We  had  published  a  photograph  taken 
by  him,  and  had  failed  to  put  his  name  as 
the  photographer  in  little  type  under 
neath. 

It  was  our  mistake,  and  I  told  him  I  was 
sorry  about  it:  but  as  he  left  I  thought  to 
myself,  "  My  dear  sir,  I  have  your  meas 
ure  to  a  quarter  of  an  inch." 

And  I  felt  like  warning  him  to  be  care 
ful,  in  walking  over  the  subway  gratings, 
lest  he  should  drop  through  one  of  the 
cracks. 

For  it  is  only  little  men,  as  I  have  ob 
served,  who  are  so  tremendously  concerned 
about  the  precise  allotment  of  credit  in 
this  world. 

68 


I  can  not  imagine  Lincoln  walking  two 
miles  out  of  his  way  to  protest  because 
his  name  had  not  been  printed  in  little 
type. 

He  formed  a  Cabinet  of  men  better 
known  nationally  than  himself:  four  of 
them  were  sure  that  they  were  far  greater 
than  he. 

Seward  wrote  to  his  wife:  "  Only  one 
man  can  save  the  Union,  and  I  am  the 
man." 

Stanton  said  to  a  friend  who  asked  him 
what  he  was  going  to  do  in  the  Cabinet: 
"  I  am  going  to  make  Abe  Lincoln  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States." 

Chase  from  the  Treasury  Department 
conducted  an  open  campaign  for  Lincoln's 
defeat  and  his  own  nomination  to  the  Pres 
idency. 

Yet  Lincoln  —  aware  of  it  all  —  pur 
sued  his  quiet  way  untroubled.  He  meant 
to  save  the  Union;  and  if  he  could  do  it 
by  submitting  to  Stanton's  abuse,  he  would 
submit  gladly. 

If  he  could  do  it  by  suffering  some  per 
sonal  humiliation  at  the  hands  of  McClel- 


70       It's  a  Good  Old  World 

Ian  and  Fremont,  it  was  a  price  he  was 
glad  to  pay. 

If  Seward  or  Stanton  or  Chase  were  to 
have  the  credit  when  the  thing  was  done, 
he  did  not  care.  The  important  thing  was 
'to  get  it  done,  let  the  credit  fall  where  it 
might. 

Have  you  read  the  story  of  Harriman's 
fight  to  save  the  Imperial  Valley,  as  told 
by  George  Kennan? 

In  1907  the  Colorado  River  overflowed 
its  banks,  and  threatened  to  destroy  the 
valley.  Though  Harriman's  railroads  did 
not  own  any  of  the  land  in  the  valley,  Har- 
riman  jumped  in  and  spent  $1,500,000  to 
stem  the  flood. 

When  it  became  evident  that  another 
million  or  more  would  be  required,  he  tele 
graphed  President  Roosevelt,  and  the 
President  told  him  to  go  ahead,  and  prac 
tically  assured  him  that  Congress  would 
reimburse  him. 

Harriman  saved  the  valley;  Roosevelt 
recommended  his  reimbursement;  but  Con 
gress  never  acted  on  the  recommendation, 


and  Harriman's  roads  have  never  to  this 
day  been  reimbursed. 

Shortly  before  his  death,  Harriman  re 
visited  the  valley,  and  was  met  by  a  re 
porter. 

"  Mr.  Harriman,  the  Government 
has  n't  paid  you  that  money,"  said  the  re 
porter,  "  and  your  work  does  not  seem  to 
be  duly  appreciated;  do  you  not,  under 
the  circumstances,  regret  having  made  this 
large  expenditure?" 

"  No,"  replied  Mr.  Harriman.  "  The 
valley  was  worth  saving,  was  n't  it?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  the  reporter. 

"  Then  we  have  the  satisfaction  of 
knowing  that  we  saved  it,  have  n't  we?  " 

Not  much  reward,  you  say,  for  the  ex 
penditure  of  two  or  three  million  dollars. 
But  it 's  the  only  kind  of  reward  that  big 
men  really  value. 

There  is  a  wise  old  saying  to  this  effect: 
"  A  great  deal  of  good  can  be  done  in 
the  world,  if  one  is  not  too  careful  who 
gets  the  credit." 

If  your  object  in  life  is  to  get  credit, 


72        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

you  '11  probably  get  it,  if  you  work  hard 
enough. 

But  don't  be  too  much  surprised  and 
disappointed  when  some  chap  who  just 
went  ahead  and  did  the  thing,  without 
thinking  of  the  credit,  winds  up  with  more 
medals  on  his  chest  than  you,  with  all 
your  striving,  have  collected  on  yours. 


THE  REFLECTIONS  OF  A 
GRIZZLED  VOTER 

1WENT  down  to  the  fire-house  in  my 
precinct  on  the  first  Tuesday  of  No 
vember,  and  voted  for  woman  suffrage,  as 
has  been  my  custom  all  these  years. 

And,  to  my  astonishment,  the  next  morn 
ing  I  read  in  the  newspaper  that  it  had 
carried. 

I  say  astonishment,  because  almost  noth 
ing  that  I  vote  for  ever  does  carry.  On 
the  day  after  election  I  look  over  the  pa 
pers,  and  if  a  single  Road  Commissioner 
or  Supervisor  of  the  Poor  on  my  ticket  has 
pulled  through,  I  consider  that  it  has  been 
a  successful  election  for  me. 

Like  Truth,  I  have  grown  accustomed 
to  being  crushed  to  earth.  It  doesn't 
worry  me  as  much  as  it  used  to. 

For,  having  watched  many  elections  and 
listened  to  many  campaign  promises,  I 
have  noticed  this  —  that  the  progress  of 

73 


74       It's  a  Good  Old  World 

the  world  is  n't  permanently  affected  very 
much  by  turning  one  set  of  politicians  out 
and  putting  another  set  in. 

I  continue  to  vote,  as  intelligently  as  I 
can;  but  I  have  ceased  to  feel  as  enthus 
iastic  as  I  used  to  feel  about  the  power  of 
votes  to  usher  in  the  millennium. 

Maybe  it's  old  age  creeping  on  me; 
maybe  I  'm  just  plain  old-fashioned.  But 
I  just  can't  believe  that  anything  is  finally 
going  to  turn  the  trick  of  saving  the  world 
but  simple  individual  goodness. 

It  was  Napoleon  —  a  very  successful 
politician  —  who  said: 

Alexander,  Caesar,  Charlemagne,  and  myself 
founded  empires.  But  on  what  did  we  rest  the 
creation  of  our  genius?  Upon  sheer  force. 
Jesus  Christ  alone  founded  his  empire  upon  love: 
and  at  this  hour  millions  of  men  will  die  for  him. 

The  empires,  with  all  their  machinery 
of  election  and  of  legislation,  have  passed 
away,  leaving  hardly  a  trace  behind. 

The  Carpenter  held  no  elections :  He 
was  president  of  nothing;  secretary  of 
nothing;  He  formed  no  committees,  made 


A  Grizzled  Voter  75 

no  stump  speeches,  cast  no  vote.  Yet  the 
influence  of  His  simple  goodness  has  out 
lived  all  the  empires  of  the  earth,  and 
stands  to-day  the  most  potent  force  for 
righteousness  and  progress  in  the  world. 

I  lunched  the  other  day  with  a  cele 
brated  war  correspondent,  just  back  from 
Europe. 

'  There  's  just  one  thing  I  'm  sure  of," 
he  said.  "  Everything  else  about  the  war 
and  the  future  of  the  world  is  problemati 
cal.  But  this  I  know  —  the  world  must 
be  run  by  heart  power  after  this.  We  Ve 
tried  brain  power,  and  it  does  n't  work. 
The  Germans  developed  it  to  its  highest 
point  of  efficiency,  and  we  have  the  results 
to-day.  It 's  got  to  be  heart  power  from 
now  on,  or  we  're  all  in;  that 's  all." 

And  the  home  is  the  dynamo  out  of 
which  heart  power  flows. 

There  were  thousands  of  agitators  and 
reformers  at  work  in  the  United  States  in 
the  days  before  the  Civil  War.  They 
doubtless  did  much  good  work.  But  all 
their  influence  added  together  did  not  equal 
that  of  the  simple  woman  in  a  log  cabin 


76        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

/ 
who   gave  us  Abraham   Lincoln,   with   a 

heart  power  great  enough  to  reunite  his 
fellow  countrymen. 

I  welcome  my  sisters  to  the  ballot-box. 
They  will  clog  up  the  polling  place  a  little 
more,  and  make  me  a  bit  later  in  getting 
down  to  the  office  on  election  day.  But 
I  '11  forgive  them  all  that,  and  I  '11  vote 
for  all  the  reforms  they  think  are  going 
to  do  any  good,  so  long  as  they  will  con 
tinue  to  give  us  sons  like  the  Carpenter 
and  Lincoln. 

Meantime,  when  their  pet  reforms  and 
candidates  are  defeated  —  as  often  they 
will  be  < —  let  me  commend  to  them  Sam 
Walter  Foss: 

Let  me  live  in  a  house  by  the  side  of  the  road, 

Where  the  race  of  men  go  by  — 

The  men  who  are  good,  and  the  men  who  are  bad, 

As  good  and  as  bad  as  I. 

I  would  not  sit  in  the  scorner's  seat, 

Or  hurl  the  cynic's  ban; 

Let  me  live  in  a  house  by  the  side  of  the  road 

And  be  a  friend  to  man. 

Reforms  will  come  and  go :     Truth  will 


A  Grizzled  Voter  77 

keep  right  on  being  crushed  and  rising 
again.  Politicians  will  promise  and  fail 
to  make  good.  Movements  will  wax  and 
wane.  But  if  enough  of  us  build  our 
houses  alongside  of  Sam's,  we  '11  gradually 
turn  this  old  alleyway  of  a  world  into  a 
nice,  respectable  street,  no  matter  who  car 
ries  our  precinct  for  alderman. 


"THEY  SAY"  HAS  MADE  MANY 

A  GOOD  MAN  GOOD  FOR 

NOTHING 

THE  first  steamboats  built  in  America 
looked    like    wooden    boxes    with 
pointed  ends. 

Colonel  John  Stevens,  their  designer, 
concentrated  his  attention  on  his  engines. 

One  day  his  son  Robert  conceived  the 
notion  that  the  boats  would  make  better 
time  if  their  bows  were  longer  and  more 
sloping.  -  He  designed  a  false  bow  of  this 
sort,  and  built  it  on  to  a  ship  called  the 
New  Philadelphia,  which  slipped  through 
the  water  so  much  more  easily  thereafter 
that  it  attained  the  great  speed  of  thirteen 
and  a  half  miles  an  hour. 

Robert  had  to  build  his  bow  almost  with 
his  own  hands. 

He  took  it  to  his  ship-builders,  Messrs. 
Brown  &  Bell,  and  asked  them  to  do  it  for 
him.     But  Mr.  Bell  declined. 
78 


"  They  Say  "  79 

"  That  bow  will  be  called  Bell's  nose,"  he 
said,  "  and  I  shall  be  a  general  laughing 
stock.'9 

So  a  man  who  might  have  played  a 
worthy  part  in  the  development  of  a  great 
industry  in  America  lost  one  big  chance  be 
cause  he  was  afraid  of  the  possible  ridi 
cule  of  people  whose  opinion,  one  way  or 
the  other,  was  worthless. 

How  many  utterly  drab  and  uninterest 
ing  people  are  there  in  the  world  who 
might  have  developed  real  personalities 
if  they  had  only  had  courage  to  do  and  be 
something  different  from  the  crowd. 

Every  single  forward  step  in  history  has 
been  taken  over  the  bodies  of  empty- 
headed  fools  who  giggled  and  snickered. 

Fulton,  needing  a  paltry  $1,000  to  com 
plete  the  building  of  his  first  steamboat,  at 
length  managed  to  secure  it.  But  the 
friends  who  lent  it  asked  that  their  names 
be  withheld  from  the  public  lest  it  should 
be  known  that  they  had  any  connection 
with  so  foolhardy  an  enterprise. 

As  I  had  occasion  daily  to  pass  to  and  from 
the  ship-yard  where  my  boat  was  in  progress  [he 


8o        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

says],  I  often  loitered  near  the  groups  of 
strangers,  and  heard  various  inquiries  as  to  the 
object  of  this  new  vehicle.  The  language  was 
uniformly  that  of  scorn,  sneer,  or  ridicule.  The 
loud  laugh  often  rose  at  my  expense;  the  dry 
jest ;  the  wise  calculation  of  losses  or  expendi 
tures;  the  dull  but  endless  repetition  of  "  Fulton's 
Folly."  Never  did  a  single  encouraging  remark, 
a  bright  hope,  a  warm  wish  cross  my  path. 

Governor  De  Witt  Clinton,  pushing 
through  the  construction  of  the  Erie  Canal, 
which  was  so  important  a  factor  in  the 
early  upbuilding  of  the  country,  was  hooted 
with  cries  of  "  Clinton's  Big  Ditch  "  and 
"  Clinton's  Folly." 

Alaska,  which  has  paid  for  itself  so  many 
hundred  times  over,  was  derisively  referred 
to  as  "  Seward's  Ice-Box "  when  that 
courageous  statesman  negotiated  for  its 
purchase  from  Russia. 

Remember  this  if  you  would  accomplish 
anything  worth  while  :  The  crowd  is  gen 
erally  good-natured,  but  its  judgments  are 
seldom  the  judgments  of  history. 

If  you  have  anything  really  valuable  to 
contribute  to  the  world,  it  will  come 


"They  Say"  81 

through  the  expression  of  your  own  per 
sonality^ —  that  single  spark  of  divinity 
that  sets  you  off  and  makes  you  different 
from  every  other  living  creature. 

A  noted  English  schoolmaster  used  to 
have  as  his  motto : 

Never  explain,  never  retract,  never 
apologize.  Get  it>  done  and  let  them  howl. 

It  is  a  motto  not  altogether  to  be  com 
mended.  He  who  governs  his  life  accord 
ing  to  it  will  not  be  an  agreeable  companion 
or  accomplish  the  largest  service  under  a 
government  where  the  will  of  the  majority 
must  finally  prevail. 

But  there  is  a  rugged  spirit  of  inde 
pendence  embedded  in  it  that  many  men 
would  do  well  to  adopt. 

You  can  afford  to  have  a  decent  regard 
for  public  opinion :  but  you  can  never  afford 
to  let  yourself  get  into  the  pathetic  condi 
tion  where  what  they  say  or  may  say  will 
keep  you  from  doing  what  ought  to  be 
done. 

It 's  a  hopeless  condition  to  be  in,  be 
cause  what  they  say  to-day  is  not  what 
they  said  yesterday  or  will  say  to-morrow. 


82        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

"  For  John  the  Baptist  came  neither  eat 
ing  bread  nor  drinking  wine,"  said  Jesus, 
"  and  ye  say,  He  hath  a  devil. 

"  The  Son  of  Man  is  come  eating  and 
drinking;  and  ye  say,  Behold  a  gluttonous 
man,  and  a  wine-bibber,  a  friend  of  publi 
cans  and  sinners." 


YOU  HAVE  KNOWN  ABOUT  HIM 

ALL  THESE  YEARS:  BUT  HAVE 

YOU  REALLY  KNOWN  HIM? 

SINCE  we  stand  upon  the  threshold  of 
His  birthday,  let  me  introduce  you  to 
the  most  attractive,  most  delightful  young 
man  in  the  world. 

You  have  never  known  Him  as  he  really 
is:  all  the  pictures  ever  drawn  misrepre 
sent  Him.  They  have  made  Him  out  a 
weakling,  a  woman's  features  with  a  beard 
—  He  who  for  years  swung  an  adz  and 
drove  a  saw  through  heavy  timbers,  who 
for  long  days  tramped  the  borders  of  His 
loved  lake,  and  would  not  sleep  indoors 
if  He  could  slip  away  into  His  garden. 

An  outdoor  man  He  was,  a  man's  man 
who  could  stand  watch  when  all  His 
friends  deserted  Him  in  sleep,  and  could 
face  the  tempest  in  a  little  boat  calm-eyed 
and  unafraid. 

83 


84       It's  a  Good  Old  World 

They  have  called  Him  a  pacifist.  How 
could  they  forget  that  day,  I  wonder,  when 
in  the  midst  of  the  hard-faced  crowd  He 
stood,  and  braiding  a  little  whip,  drove 
them  out  before  Him? 

Think  you  it  was  only  the  glance  of 
righteous  anger  in  His  eye  that  sent  them 
scurrying?  I  tell  you  that  behind  that  lit 
tle  whip  were  muscles  of  iron,  made  strong 
by  many  years  of  labor,  and  a  spirit  that 
never  once  knew  fear,  not  even  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  cross. 

I  have  met  men  long-faced  and  sorrow 
ful,  wagging  their  heads  bitterly  over  the 
evil  of  the  world,  and  by  their  very  joy- 
lessness  adding  to  that  evil.  And  in  their 
hearts  they  supposed  that  they  were  rep 
resenting  Him, 

Think  of  it  —  representing  Him,  to 
whom  little  children  flocked  with  joyous 
laughter,  and  men,  beseeching  Him  to  have 
dinner  with  them  in  their  homes. 

You  remember  the  first  of  His  miracles 
—  or  perhaps  you  do  not.  Too  often 
those  who  claim  His  name  have  preferred 
to  forget  that  miracle.  It  does  not  fit  in 


You  Have  Known  About  Him     85 

with  the  picture  of  Him  that  they  have 
wrought. 

He  was  at  a  wedding  party  with  His 
mother  and  some  friends  where  the  merri 
ment  ran  high.  In  the  midst  of  it  they 
came  to  Him  in  consternation.  The  wine 
had  given  out. 

So  He  performed  His  first  miracle. 
Just  to  save  a  hostess  from  embarrassment 
• —  and  He  thought  it  worth  a  miracle. 
Just  to  save  a  group  of  simple  folk  from 
having  their  hour  of  joy  cut  short  —  it 
was  for  such  a  cause,  He  thought,  that  His 
divine  power  had  been  intrusted  to  Him. 

No  one  ever  felt  His  goodness  a  cloud 
upon  the  company.  No  one  ever  laughed 
less  heartily  because  He  had  joined  the 
group.  His  was  the  gospel  of  joyfulness; 
His  the  message  that  the  God  of  men 
would  have  them  travel  happily  with  Him, 
as  children  by  a  Father's  side,  not  as 
servants  shuffling  behind. 

They  killed  Him,  of  course,  in  the  end, 
and  sometimes  I  am  almost  glad  —  glad 
that  He  died  at  thirty-three,  with  youth 
still  athrob  in  His  veins,  and  never  an 


86       It's  a  Good  Old  World 

illusion  lost  or  an  ideal  dimmed  by  age. 

Claim  Him,  you  who  are  young  and 
love  life;  let  no  man  dispute  your  claim. 

For  He  too  was  young  and  is;  He  too 
loved  laughter  and  life. 

Old  age  and  the  creeds  have  had  Him 
too  long:  I  offer  Him  now  to  you  —  not  in 
creed  but  in  truth  —  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
the  joyous  companion,  the  young  man 
whom  young  men  can  love. 


BE  SURE  YOU'RE  RIGHT  — AND 
THEN  DON'T  DO  IT 

IN  Washington  the  other  day  I  called  on 
a  high  official  of  the  Government, 
whose  department  has  come  in  for  a  great 
deal  of  praise  in  the  last  few  months. 

I  found  him  in  his  office,  well  and  happy. 
And  I  said  to  him: 

'  When  I  called  on  you  three  years  ago, 
you  had  just  made  a  move  that  everybody 
thought  was  absolutely  indefensible.  In 
the  Senate  and  House  they  were  calling 
for  your  resignation.  Various  cities  sent 
resolutions  to  the  President  demanding 
that  a  fit  man  be  substituted  in  your  stead. 

'  That  was  three  years  ago  —  and  now 
you  seem  to  be  in  danger  of  becoming  a 
really  popular  character." 

He  laughed. 

"  One  thing  a  man  has  to  learn  in  public 
office,"  he  said,  "  is  that  criticism  is  inevi 
table.  The  man  who  lets  his  judgment  be 
87 


88        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

deflected  from  day  to  day  by  what  the  peo 
ple  think  or  say,  will  go  on  the  rocks  as 
sure  as  shooting. 

"  A  man  must  trust  his  own  judgment 
and  conscience,  and  go  ahead.  Some  day, 
if  he  has  been  true,  the  facts  will  come  to 
light  and  justify  him." 

Coming  back  on  the  train,  I  picked  up 
Ida  Tarbell's  "Life  of  Lincoln,"  and  read 
again  the  story  of  those  bitter  years  of 
Civil  War. 

In  the  West  was  Fremont,  brilliant,  im 
petuous,  conceited  —  the  popular  idol. 
Without  consultation  or  authority  from  the 
President,  he  issued  in  his  own  name  an 
Emancipation  Proclamation.  It  was  im 
mensely  popular  in  the  North.  Newspa 
pers  and  public  speakers  hailed  it  as  a 
stroke  of  statesmanship,  and  its  author  as 
the  man  of  vision  who  dared  while  the 
President  weakly  hesitated. 

The  country  did  not  know  the  full  facts : 
Lincoln  did.  He  knew  that  such  a  procla 
mation,  issued  at  that  hour,  would  do  far 
greater  harm  than  good.  It  would  not 
help  to  save  the  Union;  and  it  might  throw 


Be  Sure  You  're  Right         89 

into  the  arms  of  the  Confederacy  those 
border  States  which  had  it  in  their  power 
to  win  the  war. 

So  he  modified  the  proclamation. 

When  his  order  was  made  public,  says 
Miss  Tarbell,  "  a  perfect  storm  of  denun 
ciation  broke  over  the  President.  The 
whole  North  felt  outraged.  There  was 
talk  of  impeaching  Lincoln  and  replacing 
him  with  Fremont.  Great  newspapers 
criticized  him,  warning  him  to  learn  where 
he  was  tending.  Influential  men  in  all  pro 
fessions  spoke  bitterly  of  his  action. 

"  '  How  many  times,'  wrote  James  Rus 
sell  Lowell,  '  are  we  to  save  Kentucky  and 
lose  our  self-respect?' 

And  all  the  time  Lincoln,  knowing  better 
than  any  of  his  critics,  having  in  his  own 
mind  his  own  plan  for  an  Emancipation 
Proclamation,  held  his  peace,  enduring  the 
criticism,  waiting  for  the  proper  hour. 

Passages  like  that  make  me  feel  very 
reticent  about  exercising  my  divine  right, 
as  an  American  citizen,  to  denounce  the 
Government. 

So  often,  in  our  history,  the  events  have 


90 

proved  that  those  who  were  criticized  had 
all  the  facts,  and  the  critics  only  part. 

So  often  men  have  slain  the  prophets 
and  then  erected  mausoleums  to  them  aft 
erwards. 

Criticism  is  an  intelligent  service  in  a 
democracy:  but  it  is  a  very  specialized  job; 
and  I,  for  one,  am  willing  that  it  should  be 
somebody's  else  job. 

Generally  speaking,  there  is  safety  in 
this  rule,  and  a  lot  of  solid  sense : 

Don't  criticize  until  you  're  sure  you  're 
right. 

Then  don't. 

Usually  by  the  time  you're  absolutely 
sure,  it  will  be  too  late,  anyway. 


I  HAVE  ALWAYS  HAD  A  SOFT 

SPOT  IN  MY  HEART  FOR 

JOSEPH 

I    HAVE  always  had  a  soft  spot  in  my 
heart  for  Joseph,  the  true-hearted  car 
penter  of  Nazareth. 

To  Mary,  his  wife,  the  mother  of  Jesus, 
the  world  pays  generous  homage,  and  well 
it  may. 

Her  faith  was  firm  at  the  end;  she  was 
one  of  those  who  stood  brave  and  trusting 
even  at  the  foot  of  the  cross. 

The  world  remembers  that;  and  gener 
ously  forgets  that  there  were  times  when 
her  Son  was  too  great  a  mystery  for  her. 
Times  when  she  and  His  brethren  would 
have  locked  Him  up  as  mad,  and  when  He 
spoke  of  them  almost  as  though  they  were 
hardly  worthy  of  Him. 

We  forget  all  this,  and  remember  her 
at  her  best,  and  she  deserves  to  be  remem 
bered. 

91 


92        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

But  Joseph  we  remember  hardly  at  all. 
Yet  he  must  have  been  a  wonderful  man. 

"  Suffer  the  little  children  to  come  unto 
me  " —  Jesus  said,  holding  out  his  tired 
arms,  and  smiling;  even  as  His  patient  car 
penter-father  had  opened  his  arms  to  his 
own  children  at  the  close  of  the  wearying 
day. 

Remembering  such  a  scene  as  that  I 
stand  reverently  before  the  memory  of 
Joseph.  This  is  his  distinction  —  he  so 
represented  fatherhood  to  his  own  Son, 
that  the  Son  could  conceive  of  no  more 
splendid  title  for  God  than  the  single  title, 
"  Father." 

There  is  no  reward  of  riches  for  suc 
cessful  fathers;  no  distinguished  service 
medal;  no  Victoria  Cross. 

We  reverence  Washington  and  Lincoln, 
Luther  and  Phillips  Brooks;  but  the  men 
who  gave  them  birth  and  training  have 
disappeared  from  our  remembrance. 

Yet  I  know  of  no  business  of  greater 
compensations  than  the  business  of  success 
ful  fatherhood. 

Recently  I  was  a  visitor  at  two  homes. 


A  Soft  Spot  for  Joseph         93 

The  first  was  a  home  of  abundance;  we 
ate  on  rich  china,  and  sat  afterwards  amid 
expensive  surroundings.  I  wondered  that 
a  man  who  had  so  much  should  seem  to 
find  so  little  satisfaction  in  it. 

Late  in  the  evening  I  discovered  the 
truth. 

"  Men  call  me  fortunate,"  he  said  to 
me,  "  but  they  do  not  know  what  they 
say.  I  have  made  a  failure  of  the  only 
thing  in  life  that  counts.  My  son  is 
worthless  —  and  I  let  him  drift  into 
worthlessness." 

The  other  home  was  modest.  The  man 
who  dwells  in  it  will  never  be  heard  of 
beyond  the  limits  of  his  own  small  town. 
But  he  has  put  humanity  in  his  debt.  The 
lives  that  he  has  brought  into  the  world 
will  shed  glory  on  his  name  long  after  he 
has  passed  beyond. 

He  has  paid  the  price,  of  course;  he 
might  perhaps  have  gone  farther  in  busi 
ness  if  he  had  been  content  to  sacrifice 
everything  to  business. 

But  for  years  he  has  made  it  a  rule  to 
take  some  regular  time  each  day  to  be  a 


94        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

comrade  to  his  boys.  Their  reading,  their 
sports,  their  problems  are  a  first  considera 
tion  on  his  calendar.  In  business  he 
makes  only  his  living;  at  home  he  is  guid 
ing  and  molding  lives. 

"  Do  not  be  concerned  at  my  death," 
murmured  Samuel  Wesley  on  his  dying  bed. 
"  God  will  then  begin  to  manifest  himself 
in  my  family." 

The  world  has  erected  no  monument 
above  Samuel  Wesley:  he  has  been  for 
gotten  —  as  completely  forgotten  as 
though  he  had  been  a  king  of  England  or 
a  millionaire. 

But  the  influence  of  his  character  will 
not  perish.  His  is  the  proud  heritage  of 
the  friends  of  Joseph  —  the  unobtrusive, 
unremembered  fellowship  of  men  who  lose 
their  lives  in  fatherhood 

—  and  losing  them,  find  an  immortality 
in  the  undying  influence  of  their  sons. 


SEVERAL  years  ago  when  I  had  just 
been  promoted  to  my  first  real  job,  I 
called  on  a  business  friend  of  mine.  He 
is  a  wise  and  experienced  handler  of  men; 
I  asked  him  what  suggestions  he  could 
make  about  executive  responsibility. 

u  You  are  about  to  make  the  great  dis 
covery,"  he  said.  "  Within  a  week  or  two 
you  will  know  why  it  is  that  executives 
grow  gray  and  die  before  their  time.  You 
will  have  learned  the  bitter  truth  that 
there  are  no  efficient  people  in  the  world." 

I  am  still  very  far  from  admitting  that 
he  was  right,  but  I  know  well  enough  what 
he  meant.  Every  man  knows  who  has 
ever  been  responsible  for  a  piece  of  work, 
or  had  to  meet  a  pay-roll. 

Recently  another  friend  of  mine  built 
a  house.  The  money  to  build  it  repre 
sented  a  difficult  period  of  saving  on  the 
part  of  himself  and  his  wife;  it  meant  ov 
ertime  work  and  self-denial,  and  extra  ef- 

95 


96        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

fort  in  behalf  of  a  long-cherished  dream. 

One  day  when  the  work  was  well  along, 
he  visited  it,  and  saw  a  workman  climbing 
a  ladder  to  the  roof  with  a  little  bunch  of 
shingles  in  his  hands. 

"  Look  here,"  the  foreman  cried,  "  can't 
you  carry  a  whole  bundle  of  shingles?  " 

The  workman  regarded  him  sullenly. 

"  I  suppose  I  could,"  he  answered,  "  if  I 
wanted  to  bull  the  job." 

By  "  bull  the  job  "  he  meant  "  do  an 
honest  day's  work." 

At  ten  o'clock  one  morning  I  met  still 
another  man  in  his  office  in  New  York. 
He  was  munching  a  sandwich  and  gulping 
a  cup  of  coffee  which  his  secretary  had 
brought  in  to  him. 

"  I  had  to  work  late  last  night,"  he  said, 
"  and  meet  a  very  early  appointment  this 
morning.  My  wife  asked  our  maid  to 
have  breakfast  a  half  hour  early  so  that  I 
might  have  a  bite  and  still  be  here  in 
time." 

"  When  I  came  down  to  breakfast,  the 
maid  was  still  in  bed." 

She  lives  in  his  home,  and  eats,  and  is 


"And  Re  Goeth"  97 

clothed  by  means  of  money  which  his  brain 
provides;  but  she  has  no  interest  in  his 
success,  no  care  whatever  except  to  do  the 
minimum  of  work. 

"  The  real  trouble  with  the  world  to 
day  is  a  moral  trouble,"  said  a  thoughtful 
man  recently.  "  A  large  proportion  of  its 
people  have  lost  all  conception  of  what  it 
means  to  render  an  adequate  service  in  re 
turn  for  the  wages  they  are  paid." 

He  is  a  generous  man.  On  almost  any 
sort  of  question  his  sympathies  are  likely 
to  be  with  labor,  and  so  are  mine.  I  am 
glad  that  men  work  shorter  hours  than 
they  used  to,  and  in  certain  instances  I 
think  the  hours  should  be  even  shorter. 
I  am  glad  they  are  paid  higher  wages,  and 
hope  they  may  earn  still  more. 

But  there  are  times  when  my  sympathy 
goes  out  to  those  in  whose  behalf  no  voice 
is  ever  raised  —  to  the  executives  of  the 
world,  whose  hours  are  limited  only  by  the 
limit  of  their  physical  and  mental  endur 
ance,  who  carry  not  merely  the  load  of 
their  own  work,  but  the  heartbreaking 
load  of  carelessness  and  stolid  indifference 


98        It's  a  Good  Old  World 

in  so  many  of  the  folks  whom  they  employ. 

Perhaps  the  most  successful  executive 
in  history  was  that  centurion  of  the  Bible. 

"  For  I  am  a  man  under  authority,  hav 
ing  soldiers  under  me,"  he  said.  "  And 
I  say  to  this  man  go,  and  he  goeth;  and  to 
another,  come,  and  he  cometh;  and  to  my 
servant,  do  this,  and  he  doeth  it." 

Marvelous  man! 

The  modern  executive  also  says  "  Go," 
and  too  often  the  man  who  should  have 
gone  will  appear  a  day  or  two  later  and 
explain,  "  I  didn't  understand  what  you 
meant."  He  says  "  Come,"  and  at  the 
appointed  time  his  telephone  rings  and  a 
voice  speaks  saying:  "  I  overslept  and 
will  be  there  in  about  three  quarters  of  an 
hour  " 


"  IN  A  MANGER  " 

JUST  a  group  of  simple  shepherds  they 
were:  going  about  their  jobs  as  usual, 
with  no  suspicion  that  this  night  would  be 
different  from  any  other. 

And  to  them,  of  all  men  in  the  world, 
the  heavenly  vision  came. 

In  their  ears,  mingled  with  the  noises  of 
their  daily  toil,  the  angel  voices  sounded. 

Thousands  of  men  were  looking  eagerly 
for  the  appearance  of  the  Messiah  that 
night  —  as  they  had  looked  for  His  ap 
pearance  every  night  for  years. 

Surely  with  great  acclaim  He  would 
come:  in  a  King's  palace,  with  signs  and 
wonders  to  restore  His  chosen  people. 

And  while  their  eyes  were  fixed  on  high 
to  see  the  great  event,  lo,  the  great  event 
took  place  at  their  very  feet;  and  they 
never  saw  it. 

He  came  to  the  world  out  of  the  depths, 
not  on  the  heights.  They  found  Him  "  ly 
ing  in  a  manger." 

99 


It  often  happens  so  in  life. 

There  is  in  the  world  to-day  a  man  who 
has  toiled  terribly  that  he  might  achieve  a 
vast  success. 

He  has  piled  dollar  upon  dollar  and 
business  upon  business.  Mounting  to  the 
top  of  the  great  pile  which  he  has  made, 
he  has  looked  longingly  for  a  glimpse  of 
the  thing  worth  while;  and  he  has  not 
found  it. 

While,  only  one  short  block  from  his 
home,  in  a  little  cottage,  surrounded  by  his 
red-cheeked  children,  a  man  who  will  never 
have  ten  thousand  dollars  to  his  name 
looks  out  on  life  through  reverent  eyes,  and 
finds  it  wonderful. 

Not  in  the  palace  on  that  street  will  one 
find  the  Kingdom  of  Happiness :  but  in  the 
little  cottage. 

Even  as  they  found  Him,  years  ago, 
lying  in  a  manger. 

There  is  another  man  who  cherishes  in 
his  heart  the  vision  of  a  reconstructed 
social  order. 

He  hopes  by  laws  and  ordinances,  and 
by  this  and  that,  to  hedge  the  people  in  and 


"In  a  Manger"  101 

mold  them  so  that  they  must  be  good  in 
spite  of  themselves. 

His  mind  is  full  of  social  betterment: 
and  in  his  heart  is  no  appreciation  what 
ever  of  the  people  whom  he  seeks  to  better. 

He  has  no  confidence  in  them. 

He  forgets  that  it  was  from  them  Lin 
coln  sprang. 

He  forgets  that  it  was  the  French  Revo 
lution,  in  spite  of  its  violence,  and  not  the 
thought  and  plan  of  statesmen,  that  started 
the  modern  world  on  its  great  roll  toward 
democracy. 

Almost  every  great  movement  has 
grown  up  from  below.  Yet  he  does  not 
understand  it.  He  thinks  to  hand  im 
provement  down,  like  old  clothes,  from 
above. 

He  seeks  the  millennium  from  on  high : 
and  behold,  at  his  very  feet,  the  millennium 
is  slowly  working  itself  into  being. 

Even  as  the  great  beginning  of  the  mil 
lennium  came,  not  in  a  king's  palace,  but  in 
a  manger. 

It  is  an  easy  thing  to  fix  one's  eyes  on  the 
distant  splendor,  and,  pressing  toward  it, 


lose  the  nearer  splendor  that  lies  every 
where  about. 

It  is  a  temptation  to  say,  "I  am  so  busy 
with  the  great  work  I  am  doing,  my  activi 
ties  are  so  important,  that  I  can  not  be 
bothered  about  little  things." 

He  who  was  born  in  a  manger  was  never 
busy.  With  the  burden  of  the  world  on 
His  shoulders,  he  was  not  too  preoccupied 
to  hear  the  cry  of  a  single  blind  man. 

Wearied  by  anxious  hours  of  toil,  He 
was  not  too  weary  to  open  his  arms  to  little 
children. 

"  Take  time  to  live  each  day  in  simple 
friendliness  " — this  would  be  His  message 
to  you. 

"  The  Kingdom  of  Happiness  lies,  not 
far  off,  but  close  about  you." 

It  was  thus  that  the  shepherds  dis 
covered  it. 

In  the  midst  of  their  daily  job  the  heav 
enly  light  broke  around  them:  with  the 
noises  of  their  regular,  routine  labor  in 
their  ears,  the  voice  of  the  angel  sounded: 

"  Ye  shall  find  Him  .  .  .  lying  in  a 
manger." 


WHY  YOUR  EYES  ARE  IN  THE 
FRONT  OF  YOUR  HEAD 

IN  1833  a  clerk  in  the  patent  office  at 
Washington  handed  in  his  resignation. 

It  was  an  interesting  document,  touched 
with  pathos.  He  had  found  the  work  con 
genial,  he  said;  he  was  sorry  to  leave  it. 
But  his  conscience  would  not  allow  him  to 
continue  to  draw  pay  under  false  pretenses. 
There  was  no  more  need  for  a  job  like  his. 
Every  possible  invention  had  been  con 
ceived  and  patented;  there  was  nothing 
left  to  invent. 

In  1833  —  and  nothing  left  to  invent! 
Before  the  railroads  had  spanned  the  con 
tinent!  Before  electricity  lighted  our 
streets  and  moved  our  cars !  Before  the 
telephone,  or  the  wireless,  or  the  steam- 
shovel,  or  the  dynamo !  At  the  very 
threshold  of  the  greatest  period  of  me 
chanical  advance  that  the  world  has  ever 
known,  this  young  man  threw  up  his  hands. 

A  large  section  of  the  human  race,  in 
103 


104      I^5  a  Good  Old  World 

any  age,  belongs  to  the  class  of  that  mis 
taken  young  man.  You  find  men  at  every 
period,  their  eyes  gripped  by  the  past, 
looking  forward,  when  they  look  at  all, 
only  to  shudder  and  to  fear. 

They  were  the  people  who  criticized  Jef 
ferson  bitterly  because  he  paid  the  enor 
mous  sum  of  60,000,000  francs  for  the 
worthless  tract  of  land  beyond  the  Alle- 
ghenies.  Fortunately  he  withstood  their 
criticism  and  persisted  in  his  extravagant, 
high-handed  course,  and  the  richest  agri 
cultural  empire  in  the  world  was  added  to 
our  territory  at  a  cost  of  less  than  four 
cents  an  acre. 

They  sneered  at  Fulton  when  his  steam 
ship  lay  building  in  the  dry-dock.  The 
idea  of  a  fool  supposing  that  he  could  run 
a  boat  without  the  aid  of  wind  or  tide ! 

And  the  children  of  these  men  of  little 
faith  stand  to-day  aghast  at  the  prospect 
of  what  may  happen  to  the  world  in  the 
months  that  are  before  us. 

I  met  a  few  days  ago  a  rich  man  who 
shook  his  head  lugubriously.  "  I  am  turn 
ing  everything  I  can  into  gold  or  Govern- 


Your  Eyes  105 

ment  bonds,"  he  said,  "  and  I  am  not  so 
sure  about  the  bonds.  We  are  going  to 
have  terrible  times;  mark  my  words." 

The  same  day  a  laborer  spoke  to  me, 
nodding  sagely.  "  I  tell  you  we  have  no 
idea  of  the  troubles  that  are  coming  to  us," 
he  said.  "  Europe  is  bankrupt,  and  we 
are  on  the  way." 

They  did  not  need  to  tell  me  that  we 
are  to  have  some  trying  times :  I  know  it 
as  well  as  the  next  man.  You  cannot 
shake  the  earth  from  its  very  foundations, 
and  expect  to  set  it  back  in  place  again 
without  a  jar. 

But  I  know  this  —  which  they  do  not 
know,  or  do  not  believe,  at  least  —  that 
the  world,  with  all  its  times  of  trouble, 
still  moves  ahead.  No  man  can  play  a 
big  part  in  the  world  who  does  not  be 
lieve  in  the  future  of  the  world. 

There  is  a  thrill  in  the  thought  of  the 
days  ahead  —  with  the  rising  of  peoples 
long  oppressed,  and  the  overturn  of  cus 
toms  long  outgrown.  Suppose  it  does 
cost  us  part  of  the  money  we  have  saved; 
we're  young  and  can  make  some  more. 


io6     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

Suppose  it  does  throw  some  of  us  into  new 
jobs;  there  's  joy  in  a  job  that  is  new. 

It  is  pleasant  to  read  the  history  of  the 
past  —  but  the  wise  man  does  his  histor 
ical  reading  at  night  when  the  day's  work 
is  done.  During  the  working  hours  he 
keeps  his  eyes  on  the  great  and  glorious 
and  thrilling  future. 

For  eyes  were  made  to  look  forward; 
that 's  why  they  're  placed  in  the  front  of 
the  head. 


WOULD  YOU  BE  GREAT?  THEN 
EXPECT  SUFFERING:  FOR  IT  IS 
THE  STUFF  GREATNESS  IS 
MADE  OF 

I  HAVE  been  reading  the  tragic,  inspir 
ing  story  of  a  great  man. 

His  work  has  enriched  the  life  of  every 
generation  since  his  own :  but  his  life  was 
a  long,  dark  day  of  suffering. 

This  man  was  Ludwig  von  Beethoven. 

He  was  born  in  a  humble  cottage  in 
Bonn  in  the  year  1770.  His  parents  were 
poor,  but  that  is  a  minor  matter.  The 
parents  of  most  great  men  have  been  poor. 

Tragedy  entered  Beethoven's  life  not  by 
reason  of  his  parents'  poverty,  but  because 
they  were  utterly  incapable  of  appreciat 
ing  the  fine  spiritual  gift  that  was  in  the 
boy. 

His  father  had  no  thought  but  to  ex 
ploit  the  son's  musical  talent.  At  the  age 
of  eleven  he  was  playing  in  theater  or- 
107 


io8      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

chestras  and  carrying  burdens  far  too 
heavy  for  his  young  shoulders  to  bear. 

His  health  was  poor:  there  were  none 
to  appreciate  his  genius:  and  in  the  glory 
of  his  young  manhood,  when  he  was  just 
beginning  to  feel  his  power,  his  life  was 
clouded  by  an  irremediable  calamity.  He 
began  to  lose  his  hearing. 

Think  of  it! 

A  musician,  dependent  on  the  fine  har 
mony  of  sounds  for  his  success  —  and  deaf 
at  twenty-six. 

Poverty-stricken,  unloved,  betrayed  and 
flouted  by  the  nephew  for  whom  he  had 
sacrificed  everything,  this  unconquerable 
spirit  yet  gave  to  the  world  music  that  has 
gladdened  the  hearts  of  millions  of  men 
and  women  in  every  land. 

I  have  no  friend;  I  must  live  alone  [he  said]. 
But  I  know  that  in  my  heart  God  is  nearer  to 
me  than  to  others.  I  approach  him  without  fear; 
I  have  always  known  him.  Neither  am  I  anx 
ious  about  my  music,  which  no  adverse  fate  will 
overtake,  and  which  will  free  him  who  under 
stands  it  from  the  misery  which  afflicts  others. 

And  at  another  time  : 


Would  You  Be  Great?       109 

I  want  to  prove  that  whoever  acts  rightly  and 
nobly  can  by  that  alone  bear  misfortune. 

No  man  can  read  these  words,  remem 
bering  Beethoven's  life,  without  feeling 
his  own  soul  enriched  and  strengthened. 

It  is  a  significant  thing  that  a  large  pro 
portion  of  the  great  lives  of  history  have 
been  conceived  in  suffering  and  nurtured 
on  disappointment  and  pain. 

We  think  of  Lincoln  as  the  great  story 
teller.  But  if  you  would  know  the  real 
Lincoln,  look  at  the  deep  lines  in  his  face. 

Napoleon  conquered  the  world;  yet  he 
almost  never  laughed.  He  was  never 
really  well;  never  rose  from  his  bed  feel 
ing  rested;  he  was  so  depressed  as  a  young 
man  that  he  seriously  contemplated  end 
ing  his  life. 

It  was  a  famous  writer  who  said: 
"  What  has  been  well  written  has  been  well 
suffered." 

"  The  lives  of  the  great  heroes  were 
lives  of  long  martyrdom,"  says  Remain 
Holland  in  the  "Life  of  Beethoven"  from 
which  I  have  quoted.  "  A  tragic  destiny 
willed  their  souls  to  be  forged  on  the  anvil 


no      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

of  physical  and  moral  grief,  of  misery  and 
ill  health." 

There  is  this  consolation  to  you  in  your 
hours  of  disappointment  and  distress  — 
that  suffering  is  the  stuff  out  of  which  true 
greatness  grows. 

Yield  to  it  weakly,  and  it  will  destroy 
you.  Rise  a  conqueror  of  it,  and  by  that 
act  you  become  a  finer  spirit,  a  greater 
man  or  woman. 

"  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up,  will  draw  all  men 
unto  me,"  said  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

By  "  lifted  up  "  He  meant  "  lifted  up 
on  the  cross" — crucified.  Only  by  His 
suffering  and  death  could  He  become  the 
Cure  and  Saviour  of  the  world. 

There  was  no  short  cut,  no  easier  way, 
to  greatness  and  glory  for  Him :  and  there 
seldom  is  for  any  man. 


IF  THERE  WERE  ONLY  A  TAX 
ON  TALK 

AT  a  public  dinner  some  weeks  ago  five 
speakers  were  scheduled.  It  was 
agreed  that  each  would  speak  for  twenty 
minutes  —  a  hundred  minutes  of  oratory, 
all  that  any  patient  audience  ought  to  be 
called  upon  to  stand. 

The  first  man  spoke  twenty-two  minutes. 

The  second  man  spoke  twenty-five. 

The  third  man  stood  on  his  feet  and 
rambled  along  for  an  hour  and  forty-four 
minutes ! 

The  other  two  speakers,  with  an  amount 
of  Christian  charity  and  common  sense  not 
often  found  among  platform  habitues,  had 
meanwhile  folded  their  tents  and  gone 
home. 

The  speaker  has  an  unfair  advantage 
over  a  writer. 

Any  reader  of  this  piece  can,  at  any  mo 
ment,  decide  that  it  is  not  worth  reading, 
and  move  on  (as  doubtless  many  do), 
in 


112      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

But  no  man  rises  in  the  middle  of  a  pub 
lic  address,  jams  on  his  hat  and  stamps 
down  the  aisle. 

We  are  held  by  a  certain  convention  of 
courtesy:  and  nine  speakers  out  of  ten  pre 
sume  upon  that  fact. 

Only  once  in  a  blue  moon  does  a  man 
arise  and,  without  palaver,  drive  right  to 
the  point,  making  his  statement  in  a  few 
crisp  words,  and  sitting  down  before  we 
are  ready  to  have  him  stop. 

Such  a  one  leaves  us  gasping  with  re 
lief  and  admiration :  we  would  with  the 
slightest  encouragement,  shout  for  him  for 
President.  He  glistens  in  our  memory; 
and  we  mention  his  name  with  a  certain 
awe  when  the  names  of  speakers  are  told. 

Brevity  is  so  popular  a  virtue  that  I  can 
not  understand  why  more  speakers  do  not 
cultivate  it. 

It  is  one  of  the  keys  to  immortality. 

Two  men  spoke  at  Gettysburg  on  the 
same  afternoon  during  the  Civil  War. 
One  man  was  named  Everett,  the  leading 
orator  of  his  day;  and  he  made  a  typically 
"  great  "  oration. 


A  Tax  on  Talk  113 

What  reader  of  this  page  has  ever  heard 
it  referred  to;  or  could  repeat  a  single 
line? 

The  other  speaker  read  from  a  slip  of 
paper  less  than  300  words.  His  speech 
—  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  Address  —  will 
live  forever. 

Greeley  used  to  say  that  the  way  to 
write  a  good  editorial  was  to  write  it  to 
the  best  of  your  ability,  then  cut  it  in  two 
in  the  middle  and  print  the  last  half. 

When  a  reporter  complained  to  Dana 
that  he  could  not  possibly  cover  a  certain 
story  in  six  hundred  words,  Dana  sent  him 
to  the  Bible : 

"  The  whole  story  of  the  creation  of  the 
world  is  told  in  less  than  six  hundred,"  he 
exclaimed. 

Everything  is  taxed  these  days  except 
talk:  and  no  tax  could  be  more  popular 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  patient  con 
sumer. 

The  tax  should  be  graded,  like  the  in 
come  tax.  Let  speeches  of  five  minutes  or 
under  be  exempt;  from  five  to  ten  minute 
speeches,  ten  per  cent;  ten  to  fifteen  min- 


H4      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

utes,  fifteen  per  cent.  Over  thirty  min 
utes,  sixty  per  cent;  and  over  an  hour  100 
per  cent,  with  double  taxes  on  all  speeches 
in  Congress. 

Only  by  some  such  rigorous  treatment 
will  the  spoken  word  regain  a  position  of 
respect;  and  silence  receive  the  honor  that 
is  its  due. 

There  is  one  historical  character  who 
has  fascinated  me.  His  name  was  Enoch : 
the  honor  conferred  upon  him  has  been  en 
joyed  by  no  other;  yet  his  whole  biography 
is  written  in  less  than  twenty  words. 

"  And  Enoch  walked  with  God:  and  he 
was  not:  for  God  took  him." 

So  far  as  we  know  he  was  the  only  man 
ever  selected  by  the  Almighty  as  a  walking 
companion. 

And  there  is  every  indication  that  he  was 
a  man  of  very  few  words. 


THE  GREAT  GOD  "  MUST  ' 

A  FEW  days  ago  a  successful  man  sat 
in  my  office  discussing  his  business. 

"Our  organization  is  all  right;  we're 
showing  good  profits,"  he  said.  "  The 
only  thing  we  lack  is  a  boss  that  can  make 
things  hum  as  they  used  to  in  the  old  days 
when  we  were  poor  and  struggling. 

"  The  best  thing  that  could  happen  to 
the  business  would  be  for  me  to  lose  all 
my  money.  I  don't  have  to  worry  any 
more;  I  don't  have  to  work  —  and  try  as 
he  may,  the  man  who  does  n't  have  to  work 
can't  put  the  same  fire  into  it  as  he  did 
when  his  living  and  his  future  were  at 
stake." 

The  next  afternoon  at  the  club  I  ran 
into  a  college  mate  whose  father  left  him 
plenty  of  money.  He  had  as  much  ability 
as  any  man  in  his  class;  and  he  has  worked 
at  one  job  and  another  after  a  fashion. 
No  one  could  accuse  him  of  being  shiftless. 


ii6      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

But  always  in  the  back  of  his  mind  was 
the  consciousness  that  he  did  not  need  to 
work.  If  he  lost  the  job,  if  it  proved  un 
pleasant  and  he  quit,  nothing  vital  was 
sacrificed.  He  still  could  live  and  wait  to 
look  around  for  something  more  according 
to  his  fancy.  So  while  some  other  men, 
who  have  had  to  hustle  from  commence 
ment  day,  have  made  real  places  for  them 
selves,  he  still  is  holding  jobs  —  none  of 
which  seem  to  him  quite  worth  holding. 

There  is  something  in  all  this  worth  re 
membering  in  days  when  the  air  is  so  full 
of  schemes  for  reorganizing  the  world  on 
an  easier  basis.  All  the  socialistic  systems 
I  have  ever  heard  of,  all  the  plans  for  sub 
stituting  governmental  ownership  for  pri 
vate  ownership,  break  down  when  you  ask 
this  impertinent  question : 

"  But  how  are  you  going  to  get  men  to 
work?" 

William  James,  «the  psychologist, 
pointed  out  long  ago  that  even  the  most 
ambitious  of  us  live  at  about  half  our 
actual  capacity.  It's  only  when  we  are 
stirred  by  a  great  demand,  an  insistent  ne- 


The  Great  God  "Must"     117 

cessity,  that  we  accomplish  the  sort  of 
things  that  make  us  proud  of  our  humanity. 

The  war  proved  that  to  millions  of  men. 

We  subscribed  for  Liberty  Bonds  away 
beyond  our  capacity  to  pay;  we  didn't  see 
how  we  could  possibly  work  our  way  out. 
Yet  we  did  work  our  way  out.  We  did 
because  we  had  to. 

I  have  seen  writers  become  so  well  fixed 
financially  that  they  could  take  things  easy. 

"  Now  I  can  do  really  fine  work,"  they 
say.  "  I  have  leisure,  and  can  wait  until  I 
am  fully  rested  and  then  produce  a  master 
piece  which  will  show  no  trace  of  pressure 
or  necessity." 

And  usually  they  produce  nothing  at  all. 

Most  of  the  great  works  of  art  have 
been  the  creation  of  men  who  needed  food 
and  drink  and  room-rent.  Old  Mother 
Hubbard  when  she  went  to  the  cupboard 
and  found  not  even  a  single  bone,  was 
then  in  perfect  condition  to  sit  down  and 
write  a  first-class  novel,  or  carve  an  im 
mortal  statue  or  start  a  beauty  parlor  that 
would  have  made  her  rich. 

We   need   a   little   more   clear-thinking 


ii8      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

these  days  —  a  new  gospel  of  work,  and  a 
new  definition  of  independence.  We  have 
talked  about  independence  as  though  it 
meant  leisure,  freedom  from  responsibility, 
the  opportunity  to  loaf. 

But  real  independence  is  mastery  —  the 
proud  consciousness  of  being  able  to  do  a 
task  a  little  better  than  the  average,  and 
the  assurance  that  the  task  itself  will  pro 
vide  the  reward  of  every  legitimate  desire. 

We  want  the  world  to  be  every  year  an 
easier  and  happier  and  more  comfortable 
place.  But  our  progress  toward  that  end 
will  be  mightily  diminished  if  we  ever  in 
stitute  a  social  system  that  banishes  the  iron 
mastery  of  the  great  god  "  Must." 


PUT  GREAT  MEN  TO  WORK  FOR 

YOU:     IT  DOESN'T  COST 

ANYTHING 

CONSIDERING  that  it  costs  nothing, 
I  am  surprised  that  so  few  people 
have  the  great  men  of  the  world  working 
for  them. 

Personally  I  should  hardly  know  how 
to  get  through  a  week  without  their  help. 

I  am  in  a  business  that  has  no  office 
hours :  there  is  no  one  except  myself  to  as 
sign  my  work  and  see  that  it  gets  done. 
And  frequently  there  are  days  when  I 
kick  against  my  boss  and  do  not  feel  like 
doing  any  work  at  all. 

For  such  days  I  have  discovered  a  rem 
edy.  I  go  to  my  desk  a  little  early,  and 
instead  of  starting  at  once  to  work,  I  pick 
up  the  biography  of  some  great  man  and 
read  a  chapter  out  of  the  most  interesting 
portion  of  his  life. 

After  half  an  hour  or  so,  I  am  con 
scious  of  a  new  feeling.  My  spiritual 
119 


shoulders  are  straighter,  my  reluctance  has 
disappeared.  I  say  to  myself:  "How 
trivial  is  my  task  compared  with  the  mar 
vels  he  achieved."  I  am  on  fire  with  his 
example,  eager  to  make  the  day  count. 

The  discovery  that  great  men  can  be 
drafted  for  help  in  even  the  humblest  of 
fice  is  not  original  with  me.  Many  an 
other  has  profited  by  it;  Emerson,  for  ex 
ample  : 

"  I  cannot  even  hear  of  personal  vigor  of  any 
kind,  great  power  of  performance,  without  fresh 
resolution,"  he  says.  "  We  are  emulous  of  all 
that  men  do.  Cecil's  saying  of  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  '  I  know  that  he  can  toil  terribly,'  is  an 
electric  touch.  So  are  Clarendon's  portraits  of 
Hampden ;  '  who  was  of  an  industry  and  vigil 
ance  not  to  be  tired  out  or  wearied  by  the  most 
laborious,  and  of  parts  not  to  be  imposed  upon  by 
the  most  subtle  and  sharp,  and  of  a  personal  cour 
age  equal  to  his  best  parts  ';  —  and  of  Falkland: 
'  who  was  so  severe  an  adorer  of  truth  that  he 
could  as  easily  have  given  himself  leave  to  steal 
as  to  dissemble.'  We  cannot  read  Plutarch  with 
out  a  tingling  of  the  blood ;  and  I  accept  the  say 
ing  of  the  Chinese  Mercius :  '  A  sage  is  the  in 
structor  of  a  hundred  ages.  When  the  manners 


Put  Great  Men  to  Work      121 

of  Loo  are  heard  of,  the  stupid  become  intelligent, 
and  the  wavering,  determined.'  " 

There  is  in  biography  an  antidote  for 
almost  every  mood. 

Are  we  discouraged  ?  A  half  hour  with 
Lincoln,  carrying  patiently  his  great  load, 
never  once  losing  faith,  makes  me  properly 
ashamed  of  myself. 

Are  we  inclined  to  be  afraid?  It  stirs 
new  depths  of  courage  in  us  to  read  of 
Stonewall  Jackson,  whose  motto  was : 
"  Never  take  counsel  of  your  fears." 

Do  we  vacillate  between  two  courses  of 
action?  There  is  in  all  literature  no  such 
warning  against  vacillation  as  the  pitiful 
uncertainties  of  poor  Cicero. 

I  would  commend  these  willing  helpers 
to  every  man  who  finds  his  task  sometimes 
heavy  beyond  his  individual  strength. 

There  is  no  limit  to  their  service.  The 
fact  that  I  employ  them  does  not  keep 
them  from  working  with  equal  efficiency 
for  you.  They  answer  at  a  moment's  no 
tice,  and  may  be  dismissed  peremptorily 
without  the  slightest  hurt  upon  their  feel 
ings. 


122      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

In  their  companionship  is  the  secret  of 
mental  and  spiritual  growth.  It  is  fairly 
easy  to  be  as  great  as  our  contemporaries. 
It  is  hard  to  lift  ourselves  by  our  own  boot 
straps  to  distinguished  effort  and  achieve 
ment. 

But  these  great  men,  any  one  of  us  may 
make  his  own  contemporaries  and  com 
panions  if  he  will;  and  there  is  no  danger 
that  we  will  outgrow  them. 

They  are  a  daily  stimulation  to  that 
which  is  best  and  most  effective  in  us  — 
they  stand  out  like  golden  peaks  of 
achievement  along  which  even  the  least 
of  us  may  climb  a  little  nearer  to  his  best 
ideals. 


HEZEKIAH    IS    DEAD:    BUT    HIS 
FORMULA  STILL  HOLDS  GOOD 

THERE  is  a  certain  man  among  my 
acquaintances  who,  with  a  little  less 
ability,  would  have  made  a  splendid  suc 
cess. 

That  sounds  strange;  but  employers  of 
men  will  understand  it:  they  will  have  a 
picture  right  away  of  the  kind  of  man  he  is. 

In  his  boyhood  he  mowed  lawns,  like  the 
other  boys:  also  he  ran  a  lemonade  stand, 
and  managed  a  newspaper  route,  and  was 
forever  figuring  out  a  new  scheme. 

He  graduated  from  high  school  and 
entered  business  with  great  promise.  But 
he  had  not  been  at  work  three  months  be 
fore  he  was  running  a  couple  of  little  pri 
vate  businesses  on  the  side. 

So  he  has  continued  through  life  — 
cursed  with  the  unhappy  gift  of  being  able 
to  do  three  or  four  things  at  once. 

He  ekes  out  a  very  fair  income  to-day,. 
123 


124      ft'*  a  Good  Old  World 

drawing  it  in  little  bits  from  half  a  dozen 
different  sources. 

But  he  is  getting  along  in  life,  and  there 
is  no  one  single  business  of  which  he  can 
say:  "  I  made  it."  He  has  scattered 
himself  so  widely  that  there  is  not  one  spot 
in  the  world's  life  that  bears  the  permanent 
imprint  of  his  effort. 

Twice  he  has  almost  broken  down  from 
overwork.  And  four  of  the  men  who 
were  his  boyhood  play-mates  —  men  who 
were  satisfied  to  mow  lawns  and  attempt 
nothing  else  —  have  plugged  along,  each  in 
a  single  business,  and  with  far  less  ability 
than  he,  have  reached  a  higher  place  in  the 
world. 

I  was  reminded  of  him  last  night,  in  run 
ning  across  a  reference  to  Lord  Mount 
Stephen,  in  the  new  biography  of  James  J. 
Hill. 

George  Stephen  —  he  became  Lord 
Mount  Stephen  afterward  —  was  the  son 
of  a  carpenter  in  Dufftown,  Scotland.  He 
worked  for  a  time  in  a  shop  in  Aberdeen, 
but  was  brought  to  America  at  an  early 
age,  and  became  one  of  the  makers  of 


Hezeklah  Is  Dead 

Canada,    and    a    power    in    the    British 
Empire. 

In  1901,  visiting  Scotland,  the  carpen 
ter's  son  was  presented  with  the  freedom 
of  the  city  of  Aberdeen;  and  this  is  what 
he  said: 

Any  success  I  may  have  had  in  life  is  due  in 
great  measure  to  the  somewhat  Spartan  training 
I  received  during  my  Aberdeen  apprenticeship, 
on  which  I  entered  as  a  boy  of  fifteen.  To  that 
training,  coupled  with  the  fact  that  /  seem  to  have 
been  born  utterly  without  the  faculty  of  doing 
more  than  one  thing  at  a  time,  is  due  that  I  am 
here  before  you  to-day.  I  had  but  few  wants  and 
no  distractions  to  draw  me  away  from  the  work 
I  had  in  hand.  It  was  impressed  upon  me  from 
my  earliest  years,  by  one  of  the  best  mothers  that 
ever  lived,  that  I  must  aim  at  being  a  thorough 
master  of  the  work  by  which  I  got  my  living ;  and 
to  be  that  I  must  concentrate  my  whole  energies 
on  my  work,  whatever  that  might  be,  to  the  ex 
clusion  of  every  other  thing. 

Concentration  —  with  the  exception  of 
honesty,  it  covers  a  larger  measure  of  the 
secret  of  success  than  any  other  word. 

I  once  asked  a  very  successful  man  how 


ia6      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

he  was  able  to  get  so  much  done  and  still 
have  leisure  time. 

"  I  pick  up  only  one  paper  from  my 
desk  at  a  time,"  he  said,  "  and  I  make  it  a 
point  not  to  lay  that  paper  down  until  I 
have  settled  the  business  that  it  involves." 

I  was  present  in  his  office  when  a  friend 
came  to  offer  him  a  participation  in  an  en 
terprise  that  promised  to  be  very  profit 
able.  He  answered: 

"  I  can't  do  it,  Jim.  I  don't  need  the 
money.  And  no  amount  of  money  could 
possibly  compensate  me  for  the  nuisance 
and  inefficiency  of  having  to  carry  two 
things  on  my  mind  at  the  same  time." 

If  you  want  a  very  good  example  of 
how  big  things  are  done,  read  the  descrip 
tion  of  the  creation  of  the  world  as  re 
corded  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis. 

It  is  a  fine  little  treatise  on  efficiency. 

An  enormous  job,  but  no  hurry,  no  rush, 
no  confusion. 

One  day  the  creation  of  light  —  nothing 
else.  The  next  day,  the  firmament.  The 
third  day,  the  creation  of  land  and  its. 
division  from  the  waters. 


Hezekiah  Is  Dead  127 

One  thing  each  day,  followed  by  a  good 
night's  sleep,  and  a  full  day's  rest  at  the 
end  of  the  week. 

The  world  has  never  improved  on  that 
formula  for  success. 

It  was  the  formula  of  Hezekiah,  who  re 
fused  to  dally  with  side-lines  or  attempt 
more  than  one  thing  at  a  time. 

"  And  in  every  work  that  he  began  he 
did  it  with  all  his  heart  —  and  prospered.'' 


THE  FINE  RARE  HABIT  OF 

LEARNING  TO  DO 

WITHOUT 

CURIOUS  things  come  to  light  when 
men  are  dead  and  the  lawyers  are 
busy  with  their  estates. 

Some  months  ago,  in  New  York,  a  bank 
president  died.  I  had  never  seen  him,  but 
his  name  was  familiar  enough,  and  I  sup 
posed  that  of  course  he  must  have  left  a 
considerable  fortune. 

Apparently  every  one  else  was  of  the 
same  opinion,  including  even  the  business 
associates  who  knew  him  best. 

Imagine,  then,  their  surprise  when  it 
was  discovered  that,  instead  of  an  estate, 
he  had  left  debts  of  thousands  of  dollars. 

Had  he  lost  heavily  in  the  market? 
No;  apparently,  he  never  speculated  at  all. 
Foolish  investments?  No.  Women  and 
wine?  No. 

Incredible  as  it  seemed,  this  man  whose 
income  was  more  than  a  hundred  thousand 
128 


Learning  to  Do  Without      129 

dollars  a  year  got  rid  of  it  all,  not  in 
gambling  or  dissipation,  but  in  the  every 
day  expenses  of  living. 

He  had  come  up  through  the  various 
stages  of  bank  employment  to  the  presi 
dency  of  a  great  institution;  and  at  every 
point  in  his  career  his  expenses  were  in  ex 
cess  of  his  income. 

Even  when  the  income  crossed  the  hun 
dred-thousand-dollar  mark,  it  was  still  a 
few  steps  behind.  Never  for  one  moment 
had  he  been  the  master  of  his  life.  At  a 
hundred  thousand  a  year  he  was  as  much 
the  slave  of  circumstance  as  any  twelve- 
dollar-a-week  clerk  whose  expenses  are 
fourteen  dollars. 

An  extraordinary  case,  you  exclaim. 
Yes  —  but  extraordinary  only  in  the  size 
of  the  figures  involved.  In  all  other  re 
spects  the  gentleman  was  typical  of  a  large 
percentage  of  his  fellow  countrymen. 

A  general,  he  was,  in  the  unfortunate 
army  of  those  who  take  orders  of  their 
fears,  and  march  day  after  day  to  the 
music  of  a  piper  whom  they  can  not  afford 
to  pay. 


130      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

What  a  curious  phenomenon  it  is  that 
you  can  get  men  to  die  for  the  liberty  of 
the  world  who  will  not  make  the  little 
sacrifice  that  is  needed  to  free  themselves 
from  their  own  individual  bondage. 

All  of  us  are  born  into  the  world  free : 
and  immediately  we  begin  to  get  ourselves 
into  slavery  to  things. 

We  let  the  number  of  things  that  are 
necessary  for  our  daily  life  multiply  to 
such  an  extent  that  we  have  neither  time 
nor  money  for  the  things  that  really  count. 

I  stood  the  other  night  in  a  big  store, 
looking  around  at  the  shelves.  And  it 
came  over  me  with  a  sudden  shock  that,  of 
all  the  hundreds  of  articles  displayed  on 
the  shelves  around  me,  hardly  a  single  one 
was  considered  a  necessity  by  my  grand 
father. 

None  of  them  were  included  in  the  lives 
of  the  ancient  Greeks,  who  gave  birth  to 
more  great  men  than  any  similar  period  of 
history  has  been  able  to  produce  since. 

Once  a  year  at  least  I  like  to  get  down 
Thoreau's  "  Walden  "  and  read  it  over 
again:  and  I  pass  on  that  good  tonic  to 


Learning  to  Do  Without      131 

any  of  you  who  may  not  have  discovered 
it. 

Thoreau  was  a  Harvard  graduate  who 
built  a  hut  for  himself  on  the  shores  of  a 
little  lake  near  Concord,  Massachusetts, 
and  lived  in  it  for  two  years  and  two 
months. 

For  eight  months  of  the  period  he  kept 
careful  financial  records;  and  in  that  time 
his  total  expenses,  including  the  cost  of  his 
house,  were  $61.99,  °f  which  he  earned  by 
raising  vegetables  and  by  occasional  day 
labor  more  than  half. 

He  threw  worry  out  of  the  window;  re 
duced  his  living  expenses  to  a  point  where 
he  could  provide  them  with  the  labor  of  a 
very  small  part  of  his  days;  and  so  freed 
the  remainder  of  his  life  for  reading  and 
writing  and  tramps  through  the  woods  — 
and  useful  thought. 

We  can  not  all  do  what  Thoreau  did; 
but,  at  least,  the  war  helped  us  to  learn 
the  lesson  of  his  example. 

It  set  us  to  questioning  of  each  ele 
ment  in  our  lives,  Is  this  worth  what  I  have 
been  paying  for  it? 


132      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

And  to  pondering  on  the  important 
truth  that  no  man  is  so  independent  as 
he  who  has  learned  to  do  without. 


IT  RUINED  MICHELANGELO: 
AND  IT  CAN  RUIN  YOU 

LINCOLN    said   a    wonderfully   wise 
thing  one  day. 

"  I  have  talked  with  great  men,"  he 
said,  "  and  I  cannot  see  wherein  they  differ 
from  others." 

Too  many  of  us  have  a  distorted  notion 
of  great  men :  we  see  them  only  on  their 
successful  side,  and  imagine  that  they  have 
no  other.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  great 
man  is  precisely  like  ourselves,  a  mixture 
of  success  and  failure,  of  joy  and  deep  de 
pression.  And  very  often  if  we  would 
study  him  upon  the  side  of  his  failures,  we 
might  learn  more  useful  lessons  than  those 
that  his  successes  teach. 

No  greater  genius  existed  in  his  genera 
tion  than  Michelangelo.  With  such  mag 
nificent  abilities  he  should  have  been  a 
happy  man :  yet  he  was  of  all  men  most 
miserable.  His  letters  abound  in  melan 
choly  laments. 

133 


134      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

What  was  the  secret  of  his  misery? 
Failure  to  apply  himself?  From  boyhood 
into  old  age  he  worked  incessantly. 

Extravagance?  He  denied  himself 
even  the  ordinary  comforts,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  luxuries  of  life. 

No,  his  tragedy  lay  within  himself  — 
partly  in  a  pessimistic  temperament  in 
herited  from  his  father,  but  chiefly  in  this 
fatal  weakness :  he  never  had  the  spiritual 
courage  to  say  "No!" 

Before  he  had  well  begun  one  work,  he 
allowed  his  patrons  to  force  other  com« 
missions  upon  him.  He  undertook  too 
many  things.  And  as  a  result,  in  agony 
of  spirit  over  promises  unfulfilled,  over 
work  begun  and  left  half  done,  he  passed 
his  miserable  days. 

Modern  society  is  in  a  conspiracy  to  ruin 
men  as  Michelangelo  was  ruined.  It 
comes  with  a  thousand  conflicting  claims. 

"  Be  chairman  of  this,"  it  asks;  or  "  Go 
on  this  committee  ";  or  "  Leave  what  you 
are  doing  and  tackle  this  new  job." 

And  no  man  accomplishes  anything 
really  worth  while  unless  he  learns  early 


It  Ruined  Michelangelo       135 

to  harden  his  will  and  to  utter  that  little 
word  no. 

"  How  did  you  come  to  discover  the  law 
of  gravitation?"  a  pretty  woman  asked 
Sir  Isaac  Newton. 

"  By  constantly  thinking  about  it, 
madam,"  the  great  man  replied. 

Newton  might  have  served  on  a  hun 
dred  committees;  he  might  have  invented 
a  patent  churn;  he  might  have  made  some 
money  in  the  stock-market  in  those  years 
when  he  was  "  constantly  thinking  "  about 
gravitation.  But  he  held  himself  firm  to 
his  single  purpose,  and  did  the  great  thing, 
resolutely  refusing  the  thousand  tempting 
diversions. 

It's  a  curious  fact  that  most  children 
learning  to  talk  can  say  "  no  "  long  before 
they  can  utter  the  syllable  "  yes."  Yet 
men  find  it  so  easy  to  say  yes  and  almost 
impossible  to  say  no. 

In  that  fact  lies  the  secret  of  many  fail 
ures.  It  ruined  Michelangelo  —  that  fa 
tal  inability  to  say  "  No!  "  And  it  will 
ruin  any  man  who  does  not  set  himself 
resolutely  on  guard  against  it. 


DON'T  EXPECT  ANYTHING 

VERY  STARTLING  FROM 

AN  ORACLE 

IN  his  home  one  evening  I  talked  with  a 
successful  business  man;  and  he  said  to 
me  something  like  this : 

"  Each  year  in  business  I  learn  a  few 
new  things;  and  each  year  I  discover  that 
a  few  of  the  things  I  learned  the  year  be 
fore  are  not  so  very  true,  after  all.  So 
when  I  come  to  strike  a  balance  the  an 
nual  increase  in  wisdom  is  n't  anything 
very  great.  But  of  four  truths  I  am  en 
tirely  sure. 

"  Very  early  in  my  business  career  I 
learned  that  it  is  never  wise  to  say:  '  I 
will  never  work  for  so  and  so,'  or  '  I  will 
never  live  in  such  and  such  a  place.' 
Youth  sets  out  with  a  good  many  such 
prejudices  which  it  regards  as  convictions. 
But  as  time  goes  on,  one  discovers  that '  no 
man  ever  had  a  point  of  pride  that  was  not 
136 


An  Oracle  137 

a  weakness  to  him.'  I  will  work  for  any 
one  to-day  who  is  honest  and  who  has 
something  to  give  me  in  the  way  of  ad 
vancement  or  knowledge  that  I  do  not  al 
ready  have;  and  I  will  live  anywhere  that 
my  work  calls  me. 

"  A  little  later  I  added  this  second  bit  of 
knowledge.  I  quit  trying  to  tell  other  men 
what  they  ought  to  do  with  their  lives.  A 
man's  career  is  a  matter  to  be  settled  by 
himself,  his  wife  and  his  Creator.  I  will 
help  when  my  help  is  asked,  if  I  can;  but 
I  will  not  take  the  presumptuous  chance 
of  sticking  my  finger  into  the  wheels  of 
any  other  life  unless  I  am  specifically  in 
vited. 

"Later  still  I  concluded  never  to  say 
to  any  man,  '  If  you  don't  do  so  and  so, 
I  '11  quit ' —  because  one  day  one  of  them 
answered  quite  properly,  '  All  right,  then 
quit.' 

"  Fourthly  and  finally,"  he  said,  "  I  have 
learned  never  to  slight  a  young  man. 
There  is  a  double  reason  for  that,  of 
course.  In  the  first  place,  it 's  good  re 
ligion.  Every  older  man  ought  to  be  a 


138      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

kind  of  unofficial  trustee  for  youth.  But 
in  the  second  place  it 's  good  business.  It 
may  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  any 
boy  can  become  President  of  the  United 
States.  But  it  's  certain  that  any  office  boy 
may  be  purchasing  agent  or  general  man 
ager  or  president  of  his  company  ten  years 
from  now.  And  when  he  arrives,  I  want 
him  on  my  side." 

Nothing  very  startling  in  all  this,  you 
say;  not  a  very  imposing  array  of  knowl 
edge  for  a  man  to  have  gathered  in  thirty- 
five  or  forty  years.  Very  true;  but  the 
more  you  listen  to  successful  men,  the  more 
you  are  impressed  by  the  fact  that  the  only 
bits  of  truth  they  value  are  truths  so  old 
that  most  of  us  learned  them  all  in  Sunday 
school. 

Honesty  is  the  best  policy;  no  hard  work 
is  ever  lost;  what  a  man  sows,  that  shall  he 
reap  —  these  are  about  all  that  the  aver 
age  wise  man  is  sure  of.  And  they  are 
enough. 

The  Greeks  had  an  institution  which 
they  called  an  oracle  —  a  place  where  the 
voice  of  the  gods  might  be  heard.  Usu- 


An  Oracle  139 

ally  the  utterances  of  the  oracle  ran  some 
what  after  this  fashion:  "Go  at  the 
enemy  as  hard  as  you  can,  and  if  you  fight 
better  than  he  does,  you  will  win." 

Millionaires  are  the  modern  popular 
oracles;  a  good  many  men  gather  around 
them,  thinking  that  some  day  the  great  one 
will  give  them  a  tip  by  means  of  which  they 
may  succeed.  I  have  listened  to  several 
millionaires;  and  what  they  say  is  usually 
very  sound  and  true  —  so  sound  and  true, 
indeed,  that  it  has  been  long  ago  accepted 
by  the  race  and  may  be  found  in  any  good 
first  reader. 


ON  HEARING  FROM  MANY 

UNHAPPY  HUSBANDS 

AND  WIVES 

IN  an  unguarded  moment,  when  I  was 
the  editor  of  a  magazine,  I  invited  let 
ters  on  the  subject  "My  Marriage"; 
and  the  letters  came,  not  in  hundreds,  but 
in  thousands. 

I  confess  that  the  reading  of  them  left 
me  with  a  certain  sense  of  depression  — 
so  large  a  percentage  were  from  wives 
who  do  not  like  their  husbands,  and  from 
husbands  who  wish  they  had  never  married 
their  wives. 

Of  course,  I  might  have  expected  that, 
if  I  had  thought  about  it  in  advance;  and 
there  is  in  it  no  real  cause  for  discourage 
ment. 

Happy  nations,  according  to  the  old  say 
ing,  have  brief  histories;  and  the  same  is 
true  of  contented  couples. 

"  Oh,  nothing  ever  happens  to  us,"  the 
140 


Unhappy  Husbands  and  Wives     141 

happy  wife  or  husband  says,  a  bit  wistfully. 
"  We  just  float  along  from  day  to  day;  we 
hardly  know  where  the  time  goes." 

But  the  individual  who  is  not  happy  sup 
poses  himself  something  unique  in  the 
world.  He  broods  over  his  troubles;  he 
wonders  why  Heaven  has  set  him  apart 
from  all  mankind  to  bear  so  great  a  disap 
pointment.  And,  feeling  thus,  he  em 
braces  every  opportunity  to  ease  his  spirit 
by  complaint. 

There  are  many  men  and  women  in  the 
world,  of  course,  who  have  no  right  to  ex 
pect  to  be  happily  married. 

They  misinterpret  marriage.  They  em 
bark  upon  it  as  if  on  some  sort  of  picnic; 
whereas  a  single  moment's  serious  thought 
ought  to  convince  them  that  it  is  the  great 
est  and  most  difficult  profession  in  the 
world. 

They  remind  me  of  the  man  who  was 
asked  if  he  could  play  the  violin,  and  an 
swered:  "  I  don't  know;  I  never  tried." 

Marriage  is  not  a  pleasure  excursion. 
It  is  a  business  to  be  studied;  a  kingdom  to 
be  conquered;  a  mine  of  precious  treasure, 


142     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

which  reveals  itself  only  in  response  to 
patient  work. 

Men  who  study  years  to  master  the  com 
paratively  simple  professions  of  law  or 
medicine  or  journalism  suppose  that  the 
mere  accident  of  their  being  males  is  all 
that  is  necessary  to  make  them  successful 
husbands. 

Girls  who  have  never  learned  to  carry 
through  capably  the  simplest  operations  of 
life  dance  blithely  into  the  most  intimate 
and  subtle  and  baffling  of  human  relation 
ships.  And,  naturally,  there  are  wrecks. 

Sorrow  and  disappointment  in  some  de 
gree  come  to  all  of  us,  deserving  or  unde 
serving:  no  couple  can  hope  completely  to 
avoid  them.  But  there  are  certain  rocks 
in  the  channel  of  the  good  ship  Marriage 
that  ought  to  be  cleared  away  at  the  very 
start.  The  rock  called  Money,  for  ex 
ample. 

"  I  hate  to  ask  John  for  money,"  said  a 
wife  to  me  last  week,  "  because  if  I  don't 
ask  him  I  '11  probably  get  more." 

No  woman  ought  ever  to  have  to  ask 
her  husband  for  money. 


Unhappy  Husbands  and  Wives     143 

She  ought  to  have  a  salary  —  a  fixed, 
regular  part  of  her  husband's  income,  de 
ducted  first,  not  last;  and  apportioned  to 
her  with  the  understanding  that  it  is  hers, 
not  because  he  gives  it  to  her,  but  because 
she  has  earned  it  by  her  contribution  to 
their  common  life. 

Until  the  world  recognizes  that  the  busi 
ness  of  contributing  children  to  the  race 
and  training  them  is  the  most  splendid  of 
all  professions,  far  more  important  than 
anything  that  any  man  does  in  any  office, 
and  ought  to  be  paid  for  accordingly,  we 
shall  continue  to  have  wives  "  asking " 
their  husbands  for  money,  and  marriages 
going  into  the  discard  on  that  account. 

Most  of  all,  no  man  or  woman  can  be 
permanently  happy  unless  each  has  within 
himself  some  green  pastures  on  which  his 
soul  can  feed;  some  reservoir  of  content 
ment  and  self-sufficiency,  created  by  him 
self  for  his  own  refreshment. 

The  restlessness  of  the  modern  woman 
that  we  read  so  much  about,  the  envy  of 
men  and  women  toward  people  who  seem 
better  off,  rise  largely  from  the  false  as- 


144      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

sumption  that  what  is  outside  a  man  or 

woman  has  the  power  to  create  or  destroy 

happiness. 

Nothing  outside  yourself  can  make  you 

happy,  if  you  are  barren  inside. 

"  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  within  you." 
On  that  great  undying  truth  successful 

marriages  always  have  been  and  always 

must  be  built. 


WHAT  MAKES  MEDIUM-SIZED 
MEN  GREAT? 

A  MAN  had  died,  and  the  whole  city 
mourned  his  going.     At  a  club  we 
were  discussing  him,  reminding  ourselves 
of  one  characteristic  and  another  that  had 
endeared  him  to  us. 

Finally  a  man  whose  name  is  famous 
spoke. 

"  You  know  our  friend  hardly  had  a  fair 
start,"  he  said  quietly.  "  Nature  did  not 
mean  to  let  him  be  a  big  man.  She 
equipped  him  with  very  ordinary  talents. 

"  I  can  remember  the  first  time  I  heard 
him  speak.  It  was  a  very  stumbling  per 
formance.  Yet,  in  his  later  years,  we  re 
garded  him  as  one  of  the  real  orators  of 
his  generation. 

"  His  mind  was  neither  very  original  nor 
very  profound;  but  he  managed  to  build  a 
great  institution,  and  the  imprint  of  his 
influence  is  on  ten  thousand  lives." 
145 


146     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

The  speaker  stopped,  and  we  urged  him 
on. 

"  How  then  do  you  account  for  his  suc 
cess?  "  we  asked. 

"  It  is  simple,"  he  replied.  "  He 
merely  forgot  himself.  When  he  spoke, 
his  imperfections  were  lost  in  the  glow  of 
his  enthusiasm.  When  he  organized,  the 
fire  of  his  faith  burned  away  all  obstacles. 
He  abandoned  himself  utterly  to  his  task; 
and  the  task  molded  him  into  greatness." 

A  few  days  afterward  I  spent  some 
hours  in  the  home  of  a  very  wealthy  man. 

"  Young  men  come  and  ask  me  to  use 
my  influence  in  their  behalf  to  secure  them 
this  or  that  promotion,"  he  said.  "  And 
I  am  amazed,  not  by  their  requests,  but  by 
the  attitude  toward  life  which  prompts 
them. 

"  I  feel  like  saying  to  them :  '  The  very 
fact  that  you  spend  your  time  and  thought 
campaigning  for  another  position  proves 
that  you  are  not  worthy  even  of  the  posi 
tion  that  you  now  hold.'  ' 

Then  he  went  on  to  speak  about  his  own 
career,  which  started  with  the  salary  of 


Medium-Sized  Men          147 

an  office  boy  and  has  carried  him  so  far. 

"  I  never  asked  for  an  increase  in  sal 
ary,"  he  said;  "  I  never  asked  for  promo 
tion  or  even  thought  about  it.  I  had  only 
one  single  thought  —  how  to  make  that 
company  as  great  and  as  influential  as  it 
possibly  could  be.  I  believed  that  by  ex 
tending  its  influence  we  were  extending  hu 
man  happiness;  more  than  anything  else,  I 
wanted  to  see  it  reach  people  in  every 
corner  of  the  world. 

'  We  made  that  vision  come  true;  and 
those  of  us  who  achieved  it  discovered 
that  the  company  to  which  we  had  given 
our  lives,  had  given  them  back  to  us  a 
hundred  times  richer  than  our  own  selfish 
thought  and  planning  could  possibly  have 
made  them." 

It  is  Emerson  who  somewhere  says  that 
the  average  run  of  men  fret  and  worry 
themselves  into  nameless  graves,  while 
here  and  there  a  great  unselfish  soul  for 
gets  itself  into  immortality. 

Many  hundred  years  before,  a  much 
wiser  Man  had  said:  "  For  whosoever 
will  save  his  life  shall  lose  it;  and  whoso- 


148      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

ever  will  lose  his  life  for  my  sake  shall 
find  it." 

A  rather  cryptic  utterance;  so  contra 
dictory  in  sound  that  the  majority  of  men 
pass  it  by  unheeding. 

But  now  and  then  there  comes  a  man 
who,  sensing  its  truth,  harnesses  his  life  to 
it,  forgetting  every  selfish  thought  and 
purpose. 

Often  he  knows  himself  to  be  a  little 
man;  or,  at  best,  only  medium-sized. 

But  the  world,  beholding  the  marvel  of 
his  influence,  remembers  him  and  calls  him 
great. 


THE  GREATEST  SPORTING 

PROPOSITION  IN  THE 

WORLD 

SIR  WALTER  RALEIGH  was  one  of 
the  ablest  and  most  attractive  men  of 
his  time.     Yet  he  made  this  fundamental 
mistake :  he  picked  out  the  wrong  thing  to 
live  for. 

Looking  about  to  see  what  was  most 
worth  while  in  life,  he  decided  for  fame 
and  fortune  and  thought  they  might  most 
surely  be  secured  through  the  favor  of 
Queen  Elizabeth.  For  her  favor  he  de 
meaned  himself,  and  neglected  his  wife, 
and  was  constantly  in  petty  intrigues  un 
becoming  his  talents. 

At  the  end  the  fickle  queen  turned  upon 
him  and  cast  him  into  London  Tower. 
And  her  successor  sent  him  to  the  block. 

Every  age  has  its  quota  of  Sir  Walters: 
strong  men  who  trade  their  lives  for  this 
or  that,  and  at  the  close  have  traded  them 
selves  empty-handed. 
149 


150     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

And  no  man  has  more  important  busi 
ness  than  to  determine  very  early  what  is 
really  worth  having  —  being  sure  that  the 
object  he  selects  is  one  that  can  be  de 
pended  upon  to  satisfy  him  not  merely 
through  his  full-blooded  years,  but  up 
through  the  testing  hours  at  the  last. 

What  is  such  an  object?     Money? 

I  wish  that  every  young  man  in  the 
world  could  see,  as  I  once  saw,  a  man  who 
had  bartered  his  soul  for  money,  and  who 
woke  one  morning  to  discover  that  it  had 
vanished  overnight.  Surely  a  possession 
that  can  so  quickly  fly  away,  and  that  leaves 
such  shriveled  souls  behind  it,  cannot  be 
the  supreme  good. 

Fame?  Political  preferment?  Horace 
Greeley  was  as  famous  as  any  man  of  his 
period;  he  let  his  ambition  carry  him  into 
the  race  for  the  Presidency,  and  losing  the 
race,  died  of  a  broken  heart. 

There  is  a  finer  formula  than  either  of 
these.  Plato  stated  it,  centuries  ago: 

I  therefore,  Callicles,  am  persuaded  by  these 
accounts,  and  consider  how  I  may  exhibit  my 


Greatest  Sporting  Proposition     151 

soul  before  the  judge  in  a  healthy  condition. 
Wherefore,  disregarding  the  honors  that  most 
men  value,  and  looking  to  the  truth,  I  shall 
endeavor  to  live  as  virtuously  as  I  can;  and 
when  I  die,  to  die  so.  And  I  invite  all  other 
men,  to  the  utmost  of  my  power;  and  you  too 
I  in  turn  invite  to  this  contest,  which  I  affirm 
surpasses  all  contests  here. 

A  great  game  in  which  the  player  is  a 
man's  best  self  on  the  one  side,  and  on 
the  other  all  the  temptations  and  the 
disappointments  and  the  buffeting  of  cir 
cumstance. 

The  game  of  making  yourself  the  best 
you  can  be,  let  Fate  say  what  it  will;  of 
so  investing  the  years  and  the  talents  you 
have  as  to  cause  the  largest  number  of 
people  to  be  glad,  the  fewest  to  be  sorry, 
and  coming  to  the  end  with  the  least  regret. 

"  Be  diligent,"  wrote  Polycarp  to  Igna 
tius.  "  Be  diligent.  Be  sober  as  God's 
athlete.  Stand  like  a  beaten  anvil." 

I  do  not  know  how  any  man  can  stand 
like  a  beaten  anvil  who  has  only  money 
to  stand  upon;  or  only  a  reputation  that 
may  vanish  as  quickly  as  it  came;  or  a 


152      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

ribbon  which  is  pinned  on  his  coat  to-day 
and  may  be  taken  off  to-morrow. 

But  let  him  have  invested  his  life  in  the 
mastery  and  the  cultivation  of  his  own 
best  self,  and  he  has  laid  up  riches  that 
cannot  be  lost. 

Whatever  obstacles,  whatever  disap 
pointments  may  come,  are  merely  added 
chances  against  him,  contributing  to  the 
zest  of  the  contest. 

And  in  the  end  he  has  this  surpassing 
reward,  a  clear  conscience  and  a  vision 
unafraid  —  the  prize  of  the  victor  in  the 
greatest  sporting  proposition  in  the  world. 


TO  A  CAN  OF  BEANS  —  PLANTED 
AND  CANNED  BY  OURSELVES 

IT  is  five  o'clock  on  a  winter  afternoon. 
Looking  out  from  my  office  on  the 
fifteenth  floor,   I  see  thousands  of  lights 
in  the  offices  all  about  me.     Thousands  of 
offices,  all  full  of  people. 

And  I  wonder  again  to  myself,  as  often 
before,  how  they  all  live.  Through  what 
intricate  stages  of  evolution  have  we  come 
from  the  days  when  our  ancestors  raised 
their  own  food,  made  their  own  shoes  and 
clothes,  and  lived  their  simple,  self-con 
tained  and  self-supporting  lives! 

What  millions  of  artificial  wants  we 
have  created  to  support  this  vast  organiza 
tion  of  modern  business ! 

Thousands  of  people  —  packed  into 
great  hives,  one  tier  above  another  — 

Retailers  living  off  wholesalers;  whole 
salers  living  off  manufacturers :  and  all  liv 
ing  off  the  farmer. 

iS3 


154      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

What  would  happen  if  for  one  single 
year  the  farmers  should  decide  to  quit 
work  and  come  to  town? 

I  watch  the  lights  flicker  out  as  one  man 
after  another  closes  his  desk  and  starts  for 
home. 

And  in  my  heart  I  can  not  repress  a 
slight  feeling  of  superiority  toward  them 
—  poor  dependent  folk.  They  are  going 
home  to  meals  that  come  to  them  only  by 
grace  of  the  good  nature  and  effort  of 
honest  tillers  of  the  soil. 

Part  of  my  meal  will  come  to  me  in  like 
manner.  But  part  of  it  — 

Part  of  it  is  beans.  Last  summer  I 
delved  in  the  earth  and  raised  them  with 
my  own  effort.  And  in  the  kitchen  of  our 
little  white  house  we  imprisoned  their 
flavor  and  fragrance. 

Only  food  raised  by  one's  own  toil  is 
perfect  food. 

All  beans  have  strings  —  all  but  the 
beans  that  we  raise  on  our  own  place. 

I  have  eaten  in  the  homes  of  the  mighty, 
and  never  yet  have  I  encountered  sandless 
spinach.  But  the  sand  in  the  spinach  that 


To  a  Can  of  Beans          155 

we  raise  —  ah,  just  a  trace  of  sand.  A  su 
perior,  far  more  edible  sand.  A  kind  of 
healthy  sand,  to  give  strength  and  fiber 
to  the  system. 

As  a  favorite  melody  played  in  the  eve 
ning  brings  back  the  memory  of  glad  days, 
so  those  melodies  in  cans  —  our  beans  and 
corn  and  spinach  —  carry  to  us,  even  into 
the  twilight  of  winter,  the  summer  hours 
that  were,  and  are  to  be  again. 

Hours  when  we  woke  up  with  bird  notes 
in  our  ears  and  the  fragrance  of  the  ram 
bler  calling  to  us.  And  after  breakfast, 
taking  our  hoe  in  hand,  we  went  out  to  the 
little  plot  of  land  which  a  few  weeks  ago 
had  been  nothing,  and  which  by  our  effort 
had  become  a  part  of  the  battle-line  of  Eu 
rope,  a  feeder  of  the  world. 

The  winters  no  longer  have  any  terror 
for  me:  I  cut  them  short  at  either  end. 

For  the  beans  of  last  summer's  canning 
carry  the  sunshine  of  that  garden  clear  into 
February:  and  in  February  the  seed  cat 
alogs  arrive,  with  the  scent  and  sunshine  of 
the  garden  to  come. 

I  commend  to  you  that  system  of  rob- 


156      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

bing  winter  of  its  terrors:  I  counsel  you  to 
start  to-day  to  warm  the  shaded  places  of 
your  soul  with  the  thought  of  next  sum 
mer's  garden. 

There  is  greater  need  for  food  this  year 
than  ever  in  the  modern  world  —  so  you 
shall  have  the  satisfaction  of  those  whose 
duty  is  well  done. 

There  will  be  better  health  for  you  in 
the  digging  —  and  that  alone  is  reward 
enough. 

But,  more  than  all,  you  shall  have  that 
special  sense  of  independence  as  you  walk 
among  the  mass  of  your  dependent  fellow 
men  —  the  proud  elevation  of  one  who 
needs  not  to  ask  of  any  man,  since  in  his 
own  cellar  he  hath  beans,  raised  on  his  own 
good  soil,  canned  by  his  own  right  hand. 


LINCOLN  PULLED  THROUGH, 
AND  SO  SHALL  WE 

ONE  of  the  wisest  observations  in  the 
world  was  made  by  our  old  friend 
Mr.  Dooley. 

"  Lookin'  around  me,  I  see  many  great 
changes  takin'  place,"  he  said;  "but 
lookin'  back  fifty  years,  I  see  hardly  any 
change  at  all." 

Unless  one  gets  a  certain  perspective 
on  what  is  taking  place  about  him,  his  life 
will  be  one  succession  of  panics. 

It  is  necessary  to  take  a  long  look;  to 
realize  that  human  nature  does  not  change ; 
that  in  any  age  the  same  set  of  circum 
stances  will  produce  about  the  same  re 
sults;  and  that,  slowly  but  surely,  certain 
great  principles  are  working  themselves 
out  in  the  world. 

This  is  the  value  of  reading  history. 
And  right  now  is  a  good  time  to  do  a  little 


158      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

reading  of  history;  a  few  hours  spent  with 
a  Life  of  Lincoln  will  be  especially  reas 
suring. 

You  are  worried  because  the  Govern 
ment  at  Washington  seems  so  dawdling 
and  ineffective. 

See  how  Lincoln  dawdled  with  the  rebel 
lion:  postponing  the  relief  of  Sumter  un 
til  it  was  too  late;  allowing  things  to  drift 
while  the  South  armed  itself  with  govern 
ment  equipment  and  gained  the  advantage 
of  superior  preparation. 

It  depressed  you  to  see  a  United  States 
Senator  making  a  vulgar  attack  upon  a 
man  like  Herbert  Hoover,  who  sacrificed 
every  personal  interest  to  serve  the  nation. 

All  right.  Before  you  give  up  hope, 
turn  back  and  read  the  attacks  that  were 
made  upon  Lincoln. 

Our  enemies  of  the  late  war  were  three 
thousand  miles  away;  but  the  enemies  of 
1 86 1  were  at  the  very  door  of  the  Capital; 
and  still  Congressmen  talked  and  Senators 
worried  about  their  patronage. 

Your  faith  in  democracy  is  shaken  be 
cause  it  seems  impossible  for  the  politicians 


Lincoln  Pulled  Through       159 

to  put  aside  their  petty  interests  even  in 
the  face  of  national  emergency. 

Lincoln,  wrestling  with  the  problem  of 
saving  the  Union,  was  so  besieged  by  of 
fice-seeking  politicians  that  he  exclaimed: 
"  If  the  twelve  apostles  were  to  be  chosen 
again,  I  suppose  they  would  have  to  be 
distributed  according  to  geographical  di 
visions." 

And  at  another  time  he  burst  out  upon 
a  delegation  of  Senators  who  wanted  Sew- 
ard's  head: 

'  You  gentlemen,  to  hang  Mr.  Seward, 
would  destroy  the  government!  " 

If  the  state  of  the  public  mind  for  the 
past  few  months  were  to  be  represented  by 
a  chart,  the  line  would  look  like  the  record 
of  a  fever  patient's  temperature. 

One  day  we  were  excited  by  reports  of 
German  weakness  and  Allied  success;  and 
up  went  our  hopes  of  early  peace.  The 
next  day,  with  no  special  developments, 
our  thoughts  turned  to  the  inefficiencies  of 
Washington,  and  we  were  thrown  into 
deep  despair. 

A  long  view  is  necessary:  the  sooner  we 


160     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

train  ourselves  to  take  it,  the  happier  and 
more  effective  we  will  be. 

The  war  was  won  by  the  Allies,  be 
cause  democracy  fought  on  their  side,  and 
the  whole  trend  of  the  world  since  the  Re 
formation  has  been  toward  democracy. 

But  it  had  its  ups  and  downs:  there 
were  days  of  good  news  and  days  of  bad. 
The  wise  man  held  his  spirits  in  check  on 
both  days,  looking  toward  the  final  result, 
and  allowing  himself  to  be  neither  unduly 
elated  nor  unduly  depressed. 

A  monarchy,  as  some  one  said,  is  like  a 
trim,  tight  yacht.  It  is  easily  handled, 
and  those  on  board  are  dry  and  warm. 
But  once  it  hits  a  reef  it  is  a  total  loss. 

A  democracy  is  a  raft;  those  on  board 
have  their  feet  in  the  water  most  of  the 
time,  but  they  can  not  sink. 

The  very  things  that  serve  to  make  us 
inefficient  in  war  —  free  speech,  unlimited 
debate,  a  government  organized  for  peace 
instead  of  war  —  are  the  very  things  that 
make  life  worth  living  for  us  in  normal 
times. 

And  one  reason  why  we  pray  for  the  de- 


Lincoln  Pulled  Through      161 

mocratization  of  the  world  is  just  because 
democracies  make  war  so  ineptly.  Our 
hope  for  the  future  is  founded  on  this  — 
that  before  two  democracies  can  get  in 
shape  to  hurt  each  other  very  much  the 
passions  of  their  people  will  cool. 

Be  patient  with  the  ineptness,  the  ineffi 
ciencies,  and  the  extravagances  of  democ 
racy.  Lincoln  pulled  through  in  spite  of 
them;  and  so  shall  we. 


'  THEY  WHO  TARRY  BY  THE 
STUFF " 

LOOKING  back  over  the  history  of 
some   of   the   previous  wars   in   the 
world,  I  came  across  the  campaign  which 
David  waged  against  the  Amalekites. 

They  had  swarmed  down  upon  his  home 
district  during  his  absence  on  important 
business,  and  had  burned  his  city,  Ziklag. 
When  he  returned,  it  was  to  find  smoking 
ruins,  and  the  women  of  the  city  gone,  in 
cluding  even  his  own  wives. 

So  he  set  out  with  six  hundred  men,  to 
seek  revenge.  Four  hundred  men  he  kept 
with  him  to  do  the  fighting,  and  two  hun 
dred  he  ordered  to  "  tarry  by  the  stuff." 

The  battle  was  fought,  the  Amalekites 
defeated,  and  the  victors  returned  laden 
with  their  spoils. 

They  were  flushed  and  greedy  with  their 

conquest :  they  looked  with  scorn  upon  the 

two   hundred  men  who   had   not   fought. 

Why  should   they  who   had   risked   their 

162 


"Who   Tarry  By  the  Stuff'      163 

lives  divide  with  those  who  had  remained 
behind? 

But  David,  looking  at  both  groups  of 
men, —  those  who  had  borne  the  burden  of 
battle  and  those  who  at  home  had  kept 
the  country  and  its  possessions  safe, —  re 
plied: 

"  As  his  part  is  that  goeth  down  to  the 
battle,  so  shall  his  part  be  that  tarrieth  by 
the  stuff:  they  shall  part  alike." 

And  the  account  continues :  "  It  was  so 
from  that  day  forward,  that  he  made  it  a 
statute  and  an  ordinance  for  Israel  unto 
this  day." 

I  am  thinking  of  those  men  who  wanted 
to  go  to  war  and  couldn't;  of  those  who 
were  compelled  to  "  tarry  by  the  stuff." 

I  know  how  they  feel :  I  have  talked  with 
dozens  of  them. 

They  read  the  stirring  news  of  war  in 
every  paper :  they  heard  the  bands  play  and 
saw  the  flags  wave :  one  after  another, 
their  friends  appeared  in  uniform. 

And  inside  themselves  the  fight  went  on 
^ —  the  call  to  the  colors  against  the  call  of 
the  duty  that  lay  at  home. 


1 64      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

I  wish  I  might  point  out  to  those  men 
this  one  great  truth : 

Wars  are  full  of  curious  phenomena: 
and  one  of  the  most  curious  is  this  —  that 
often  the  nation  that  wins  a  war  really 
loses  it. 

Germany  won  the  war  with  France  in 
1870.  Her  troops  marched  home  tri 
umphant:  out  of  Paris  rolled  a  great  train 
loaded  with  the  indemnity  of  millions  of 
marks. 

And  what  happened? 

The  prosperity  that  followed  that  in 
demnity  corrupted  the  moral  fiber  of  Ger 
many.  The  flush  of  conquest  made  mili 
tarism  the  national  god.  Out  of  that  ill- 
gotten  victory  grew  all  the  crassness  that 
has  had  its  final  fruitage  in  the  war  just 
ended. 

And  France,  shorn  of  her  egotism  by 
defeat,  forced  by  her  indemnity  to  practise 
thrift,  grew  stronger  and  firmer  and  finer 
than  she  had  ever  been  before. 

The  years  that  followed  our  Civil  War 
make  up  the  least  attractive  period  of  our 
history. 


"Who   Tarry  By  the  Stuff''      165 

Go  through  the  country  and  you  can  pick 
out  almost  unerringly  the  houses  that  were 
constructed  in  that  period  —  ugly  archi 
tecture,  mirroring  ugly  thoughts. 

Politically  it  was  the  period  of  the 
bloody  shirt:  spiritually  it  was  noisy  with 
agnosticism:  financially  it  saw  speculation 
and  corruption,  ending  in  the  panic  of  '73. 

We  won  the  late  war  on  the  battle-field. 

The  question  is,  shall  we  win  it  also  at 
home? 

Shall  there  emerge  from  the  war  a 
thriftier  nation,  living  more  simply  and 
more  wholesomely;  a  more  unselfish  na 
tion,  trained  to  sacrifice;  a  more  spiritual 
nation,  dedicated  to  a  great  ideal? 

The  man  who  could  not  go  to  war,  but 
who  devoted  himself  unselfishly  to  service 
here  at  home,  need  not  feel  that  he  had  no 
part  in  the  great  conflict. 

Let  him  not  for  one  moment  forget  that 
he  was  helping  to  make  America's  military 
victory  a  moral  and  a  spiritual  victory  as 
well. 

Helping  even  while  he  "  tarried  by  the 
stuff." 


THAT  FINE  OLD  FAKE  ABOUT 
THE  GOOD  OLD  DAYS 

SEVERAL  years  ago  I  had  a  talk  with 
a  veteran  of  the  Civil  War. 

I  can  see  him  now  as  he  sat  on  his 
piazza,  stroking  his  white  whiskers  and 
talking  to  me  lugubriously. 

A  crowd  of  high-school  boys  passed  us, 
shouting  and  jostling  each  other:  and  the 
old  man,  watching  them  with  sad  eyes, 
made  them  the  text  of  his  dissertation. 

"  The  moral  fiber  of  our  youth  is  de 
teriorating,"  he  said  sorrowfully.  ''  Why, 
at  their  age  I  was  carrying  a  gun  in  the 
defense  of  my  country.  When  I  look  at 
those  thoughtless  boys  and  think  what 
might  happen  to  our  country  if  another 
war  should  come,  I  give  you  my  word,  sir, 
I  shudder." 

The  good  old  man  is  gone  beyond  all 
shuddering:  but  I  wish  so  much  he  might 
have  lived. 

166 


The  Good  Old  Days          167 

For  another  war  came. 

And  the  poor  old  country  that  he  wor 
ried  about  had  nothing  but  those  thought 
less  boys  to  depend  on. 

Nothing  but  those  thoughtless  boys  — 
indeed.  One  day  I  picked  up  the  local 
paper  from  that  town,  and  there  were  their 
pictures  —  hundreds  of  them,  all  in  uni 
form. 

Transformed  overnight  from  thought 
less  boys  into  men  by  their  country's  need. 
Just  as  he  and  his  companions  were  trans 
formed,  fifty  years  ago.  The  same  sort 
of  crisis,  the  same  boy-stuff,  and  the  same 
glorious  result. 

Of  all  the  fine  old  fakes  that  have  en 
slaved  the  human  mind,  there  is  none 
greater  than  the  myth  of  the  "  good  old 
days." 

The  Greeks  were  subject  to  it,  looking 
back  always  to  their  fabled  "  Golden  Age." 

The  Hebrews  had  it  also.     They  wor- : 
shiped  the  memory  of  Abraham  who  was 
dead,  and  made  life  miserable  for  Moses 
who  was  alive. 

'  Woe  unto  you !  because  ye  build  the 


1 68     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

tombs  of  the  prophets,  and  garnish  the 
sepulchers  of  the  righteous,"  said  Jesus, 
"  and  are  yourselves  the  children  of  them 
which  killed  the  prophets." 

We  Americans  are  subject  to  the  same 
delusion. 

We  look  back  to  the  great  departed  days 
of  the  Revolution,  when  every  man  was  a 
patriot,  and  nobody  thought  of  anything 
but  the  glory  of  his  country. 

Yet  only  the  other  day,  in  the  letters  of 
one  of  the  founders  of  the  Republic  to  an 
other  one,  I  read  this  sentence: 

"  What  a  lot  of  scoundrels  we  had  in 
that  second  Congress,  did  n't  we?  " 

A  successful  man  recently  said  to  me : 
"  My  partner  is  very  gloomy  about  the 
national  outlook.  He  thinks  that  the  gov 
ernment  is  in  the  hands  of  fools,  and  that 
we  face  very  disastrous  times." 

And  I  said  to  him:  "  I  have  never  met 
your  partner,  but  I  will  describe  him  to  you. 
He  is  about  fifty-five  years  old,  and  his 
health  is  not  as  good  as  it  was,  and  he  has 
quite  a  good  deal  of  property." 

My  friend  acknowledged  the  portrait. 


The  Good  Old  Days          169 

"  But  how  did  you  know?  "  he  asked. 

And  I  told  him  that  you  may  guess  a 
man's  age  by  knowing  in  what  direction  his 
eyes  are  pointed. 

Youth  looks  straight  ahead  into  the 
future,  firm-eyed  and  confident.  Middle 
age  is  likely  to  look  to  the  side,  saying  to 
itself:  "  So-and-So,  who  walks  beside  me, 
seems  to  be  better  off  than  I." 

But  this  is  the  sign  of  old  age  —  that  it 
looks  behind  and  talks  sadly  of  the  "  good 
old  days." 

Let  not  that  baneful  sign  be  fastened  on 
you :  let  no  one  convince  you  that  the  world 
does  not  progress. 

For  we  live,  as  President  Wilson  says, 
in  a  time  that  calls  for  "  forward  looking 
men  "< —  men  who,  looking  through  the 
eyes  of  faith  and  confidence,  can  see  the 
coming  of  the  "  good  old  days"  just  over 
the  next  hill-top  —  straight  ahead. 


EVERYBODY  HAS  SOMETHING 


H 


ERE  is  a  passage  from  a  very  dis 
couraged  man: 


"  If  what  I  feel  were  equally  distributed  to 
the  whole  human  family  there  would  not  be  one 
cheerful  face  on  earth.  Whether  I  shall  ever  be 
better  I  cannot  tell.  I  awfully  forbode  I  shall 
not.  To  remain  as  I  am  is  quite  impossible.  I 
must  die  to  be  better,  it  appears  to  me." 

Another  man  equally  spiritless  wrote 
this: 

"  Why,  forsooth,  am  I  in  the  world  ?  Since 
death  must  come  to  me,  why  should  it  not  be  as 
well  to  kill  myself.  .  .  .  Since  I  began  life  in 
suffering  misfortune  and  nothing  gives  me  pleas 
ure,  why  should  I  endure  these  days,  when  noth 
ing  I  am  concerned  in  prospers?  " 

Poor  miserable  failures.  When  the 
price  of  white  paper  is  so  high  why  should 
I  be  allowed  to  soil  a  page  with  the  out 
pourings  of  such  incompetents? 

170 


Everybody  Has  Something 

Well,  the  author  of  the  first  passage 
made  a  considerable  reputation  for  him 
self  in  later  life;  his  name  was  Abraham 
Lincoln.  And  the  other  cry  of  defeat  was 
uttered  by  a  gentleman  named  Napoleon 
Bonaparte. 

There  is  a  very  popular  notion  in  the 
world  that  men  are  divided  into  two  classes 
—  the  fortunate  and  the  unfortunate. 

In  the  one  class  are  those  to  whom  every 
good  gift  has  been  given.  They  have 
health,  and  joy  in  living  and  the  natural 
capacity  for  achievement. 

The  other  class  includes  those  who,  by 
some  handicap  beyond  their  ability  to  con 
quer,  are  kept  from  being  the  successes 
that  they  ought  to  be. 

This  is  the  popular  notion,  I  say,  a  no 
tion  invented  by  us  ordinary  folks  as  an 
alibi  for  our  own  short-comings.  We  like 
to  assume  that  the  reasons  for  our  medioc 
rity  are  beyond  our  control  —  that  if  only 
we  had  been  given  more  health  or  more 
money  or  more  education  or  more  some 
thing  or  other,  we  would  have  been  some 
thing  very  different.  It  pleases  us  to  in- 


172     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

dulge  ourselves  in  envy  toward  those  who 
just  could  n't  help  succeeding. 

But  what  are  the  facts? 

If  any  man  ever  lived  and  attained  re 
markable  success  who  did  not  have  some 
serious  handicap  to  contend  with,  I  have 
failed  to  discover  that  man  in  my  reading. 

Beethoven  could  not  possibly  become  a 
great  musician.  He  began  to  grow  deaf 
at  twenty-six. 

Pope  had  a  wonderful  alibi  for  not  try 
ing  to  amount  to  anything.  He  was  a 
hunch-back. 

Demosthenes  stammered;  Julius  Caesar 
had  fits;  Lamb  was  tied  to  a  clerk's  desk; 
Byron  had  a  club  foot;  Dr.  Johnson  was  a 
constant  sufferer. 

Whether  success  is  worth  the  effort  and 
sacrifice  to  attain  it  has  been  much  debated. 
You  and  I  may,  if  we  choose,  decide  that  a 
comfortable  mediocrity  is  the  most  satis 
factory  answer  to  the  problem  of  living. 

We  have  a  perfect  right  to  that  decision. 

But  let 's  not  fool  ourselves  with  the  idea 
that  some  handicap  is  responsible  for  our 
mediocrity.  The  difference  between  great 


Everybody  Has  Something     173 

men  and  the  rest  of  us  is  chiefly  a  difference 
of  spirit  —  of  determination  and  the  will 
that  refuses  to  recognize  defeat. 

Nature  is  a  very  jealous  distributor  of 
gifts.  Nobody  gets  a  loo'/o  equipment 
for  life.  The  game  is  to  see  how  much  we 
can  do  with  the  cards  we  have  to  play. 

The  real  good  sports  do  not  talk  about 
their  handicaps;  but  you  can  depend  on  it 
that  if  you  knew  all  the  facts  you  would 
discover  that  every  one  of  them  has  some 
thing. 


WORKING  FOR  IT  — AND 
MAKING  IT  WORK 

THIS  is  the  tale  of  two  farmers,  both 
of  whom  are  dead.  As  a  youngster 
I  visited  one  of  them.  He  and  his  wife 
were  earnest  folks,  who  worked  hard  every 
iay  and  saved  money.  The  world  thought 
them  honest  and  thrifty. 

But  honest  and  thrifty  are  better  words 
than  either  of  them  deserved;  penurious 
and  sordid  describe  them  better.  Never 
in  all  my  life  have  I  entered  a  home  where 
the  worship  of  money  was  so  constant  and 
oppressive. 

At  meal  time  the  talk  was  all  of  the  cost 
of  food,  until  the  lettuce  looked  like  dollar 
bills  to  me,  and  the  butter  gleamed  like 
gold. 

For  money  the  woman  denied  herself 

every    comfort     and    satisfaction,     dying 

dried-up    at    forty-five.     A    little    money 

spent  for  medical  care  would  have  saved 

174 


Working  for  It 

the  life  of  the  son  of  the  house,  but  the 
family  debated  the  expenditure  until  it 
was  too  late,  and  sacrificed  the  boy. 

So  for  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life 
the  old  man  lived  alone,  figuring  over 
again  the  hoard  that  might  have  repre 
sented  so  much  in  happiness  and  growth 
and  love. 

He  told  me  once  that  he  had  more  than 
$16,000  in  the  bank;  and  even  then  he  did 
not  understand  that  the  $16,000  was  the 
price  of  his  soul. 

The  other  farmer  left  a  good  deal  less 
than  $16,000  when  he  passed  out;  most  of 
the  money  he  might  have  hoarded  had  been 
invested  in  things  more  enduring  than 
stocks  and  bonds. 

Some  of  it  went  into  the  education  of 
his  children,  who  are  the  finest,  most  prog 
ressive  citizens  in  their  county  to-day. 
Some  of  it  went  into  books  and  into  trips, 
while  he  and  his  wife  were  still  young 
enough  to  get  the  largest  enjoyment  out 
of  the  trips. 

He  had  no  slacker  dollars  which  moth 
and  rust  corrupt;  every  dollar  that  passed 


176     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

through  his  hands  had  to  do  its  maximum 
work  in  buying  happiness  and  friendships, 
and  family  pleasure  and  growth.  So, 
open-heartedly,  he  lived,  and  died  as  one 
who  knew  full  well  that  life  had  withheld 
no  good  thing  from  him. 

John  Ruskin  tells  this  incident: 

"  Lately,  in  the  wreck  of  a  Californian 
ship,  one  of  the  passengers  fastened  a  belt 
about  him  with  two  hundred  pounds  of 
gold  in  it,  with  which  he  was  found  after 
ward  at  the  bottom.  Now,  as  he  was  sink 
ing,  had  he  the  gold,  or  had  the  gold 
him"? 

We  are  all  passengers  working  our  way 
on  a  ship  that  is  destined  in  the  end  to  sink. 

Some  of  us  work  for  money,  some  make 
their  money  work — and  in  the  difference 
between  those  phrases  lies  often  the  differ 
ence  between  a  successful  and  an  unsuc 
cessful  trip. 

For  real  wealth,  as  Ruskin  says  again, 
"  is  the  possession  of  the  valuable  by  the 
valiant."  It  may  consist  in  gold  and  sil 
ver,  or  in  books,  or  a  home,  or  the  love  of 
little  children,  or  the  capacity  to  laugh. 


Working  for  It  177 

But  it  is  never  mere  money,  hoarded  at 
the  sacrifice  of  life. 

Such  money  no  man  ever  owns:  it  owns 
the  owner,  works  him  pitilessly,  robs  him 
of  the  joys  of  life,  and  in  the  end  destroys 
him. 


WHEN  MEN  COME  UP  TO 
THE  END 

A  VERY  prominent  manufacturer  of 
pianos  and  pipe  organs  died  some 
years  ago.  And  this  is  the  story  that  is 
told  of  him. 

He  was  very  near  to  the  end;  the  family 
were  gathered  about,  when  a  maid  entered 
the  room  hesitatingly  and  announced  that 
Joe,  the  organ  tuner  from  the  factory,  was 
at  the  door. 

"  Send  him  up,"  said  the  dying  man;  and 
Joe  came  up. 

"  Joe,  I  want  you  to  go  down  stairs  and 
put  the  organ  in  first  class  condition,"  he 
commanded.  "  We  expect  to  have  a  large 
gathering  of  people  here  in  a  few  days,  and 
every  note  must  be  right." 

Can  you  picture  the  scene?  Does  n't  it 
make  you  a  little  prouder  of  belonging  to 
the  human  race,  when  you  think  about  it? 

Some  weeks  ago  the  directors  of  a  na- 
178 


Up  to  the  End  179 

tional  institution  held  their  annual  meeting 
in  New  York.  The  President,  who  has 
been  kept  alive  for  the  past  five  years  only 
by  the  power  of  an  indomitable  will,  ad 
dressed  them: 

"  In  order  that  the  interests  of  the  insti 
tution  may  be  conserved,  I  feel  that  you 
should  at  this  time  consider  who  is  to  be 
my  successor,"  he  said.  And  with  them 
he  discussed  quite  impersonally  various 
candidates  who  might  fill  his  place  when  he 
should  be  dead. 

The  doctors  have  told  him  that  he  can 
not  possibly  live  more  than  another  two 
years,  and  may  die  at  any  moment.  He 
knows  their  verdict:  it  affects  him  not  at 
all.  Up  to  the  last  breath  he  will  keep 
going,  all  thought  of  himself  buried  in  his 
devotion  to  his  task;  and  he  will  die  as  he 
has  lived,  fighting  to  the  last  breath. 

There  are  those  who  run  from  the 
thought  of  death,  as  children  run  from  the 
dark.  No  magazine  should  mention  the 
word,  they  say;  it  is  an  "  unpleasant  sub 
ject  " —  morbid  and  depressing. 

On  the  contrary  it  seems  to  me  that  there 


i8o     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

is  nothing  more  inspiring  than  to  see  the 
way  in  which  the  brave  men  and  women  of 
the  world  have  walked  unflinchingly  to  the 
end. 

"  My  friends,  I  die  in  peace,  and  with 
sentiments  of  universal  love  and  kindness 
toward  all  men,"  said  Robert  Emmet,  the 
great  Irish  patriot. 

With  those  words  he  shook  hands  with 
some  persons  on  the  scaffold,  presented 
his  watch  to  the  hangman  and  assisted  in 
adjusting  the  rope  around  his  own  neck. 

"  Carry  my  bones  before  you  on  your 
march,  for  the  rebels  will  not  be  able  to 
endure  the  sight  of  me  alive  or  dead," 
Edward  I  instructed  his  son. 

Even  at  the  end  of  the  path,  his  eyes 
were  fastened  on  the  future  and  fear  was 
swallowed  up  in  his  determination  for  the 
success  of  his  enterprise. 

Draw  a  line  through  human  history  at 
the  time  of  the  birth  of  Christ,  and  com 
pare  the  last  words  of  men  who  died  be 
fore  that  date  with  the  words  of  those  who 
passed  on  afterwards.  The  contrast  is 
illuminating. 


Up  to  the  End  181 

Before  He  came  men  went  shuddering 
into  oblivion.  After  Him  the  great  souls 
of  the  world  passed  through  the  gate  as 
conquerors,  merely  changing  their  armour 
in  preparation  for  another  and  more  glori 
ous  crusade. 

Sir  Henry  Havelock,  approaching  his 
last  hour,  called  his  son  to  the  bedside: 

"  Come,  my  son,"  he  cried,  "  and  see 
how  a  Christian  can  die." 

The  object  of  Christianity  is  to  teach 
men  better  how  to  live;  but  it  would  have 
justified  itself  a  thousand  fold  had  it  done 
nothing  except  to  teach  men  how  worthily 
to  die. 

Not  as  victims;  not  as  baffled  players 
in  a  game  where  all  must  finally  lose;  but 
as  men  —  a  little  lower  than  the  angels  — 
faithful,  self-confident  and  unafraid. 


IF  YOU  CAN'T  FALL  IN  LOVE 
WITH  YOUR  JOB,  FOR  GOOD 
NESS'  SAKE  CHANGE  IT 

A  YOUNG  man  writes  me  this  letter : 
"  I  am  employed  in  the  post-office 
at  $100  a  month.  The  salary  is  sufficient 
to  keep  my  family  comfortable,  but  I  sim 
ply  loathe  the  work.  I  see  no  chance  of 
promotion  in  it,  and  it  demands  so  many 
of  my  evenings  that  I  have  practically  no 
home  life  at  all.  Don't  you  think  that 
under  these  circumstances  I  am  justified  in 
looking  around  for  something  more  con 
genial?  " 

My  answer  to  him  is :  Every  day  you 
remain  in  that  post-office  is  a  day  lost  out 
of  your  life.  You  are  to  live  only  once. 
What  is  the  very  best  thing  a  man  can  get 
out  of  life? 

To  be  happy  in  his  work  and  at  home. 

You   are   happy  neither   in  your  work 

nor  at  home.     You  are  wasting  the  only 

existence  that  will  ever  be  yours  in  this 

world.     You  will  come  to  the  end  of  your 

182 


In  Love  ewith  Your  Job       183 

road  and,  looking  back,  will  say  to  your 
self:  "I  was  cheated.  Other  men  had 
life  and  happiness:  I  had  only  life." 

No  matter  what  the  immediate  sacri 
fice,  find  your  real  place  in  the  world  — 
the  job  that  will  call  out  your  whole  best 
self. 

For  until  you  have  found  it  you  bear 
on  your  forehead  the  mark  of  discontent 
that  employers  shun.  The  stars  in  their 
courses  fight  against  you. 

"  No  matter  what  your  work  is,  let  it 
be  yours,"  said  Emerson.  "  No  matter  if 
you  are  a  tinker  or  a  preacher  or  a  black 
smith  or  president,  let  what  you  are  doing 
be  organic,  let  it  be  in  your  bones,  and 
you  open  the  door  by  which  the  affluence  of 
heaven  and  earth  shall  stream  into  you." 

I  know  of  nothing  so  inspiring  as  to 
read  the  lives  of  men  who  were  in  love  with 
their  work. 

Agassiz,  the  great  naturalist,  used  to 
say  that  he  believed  "  the  fishes  would  die 
for  him  just  to  give  him  their  skeletons." 

Edmund  Halley,  the  astronomer,  was 
another  happy  workman. 


184     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

Finding,  in  his  youth,  that  other  as 
tronomers  had  undertaken  to  catalogue  the 
stars  of  the  northern  hemisphere,  he  loaded 
a  telescope  on  a  boat  and  started  to  the 
southern  hemisphere.  On  shipboard  he 
was  busy  every  minute,  and  made  impor 
tant  discoveries. 

Then  it  occurred  to  him  that  if  one 
could  study  the  transit  of  Venus  —  that 
is,  observe  Venus  at  the  time  when  her 
orbit  crosses  the  orbit  of  the  sun  —  one 
could  gather  data  from  which  to  figure  the 
weight  of  the  sun,  its  distance  from  the 
earth,  and  many  other  important  facts 
about  the  solar  system. 

But  the  next  transit  of  Venus  was  not 
to  occur  until  1769.  It  was  almost  certain 
that  Halley  could  not  live  that  long. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  died  in  1742. 

But  when  1769  rolled  round,  the  as 
tronomers  of  that  day  found  all  ready  and 
waiting  for  them  the  formulas  which  Hal- 
ley  had  prepared. 

The  man  who  had  loved  his  work  so 
whole-heartedly  in  life  lived  on  triumphant 


In  Love  'with  Your  Job       185 

over  death.  His  devotion  had  won  him 
immortality. 

I  should  want  to  be  paid  at  least  $50,- 
ooo  a  year  to  be  president  of  a  brewery  or 
a  civil  engineer.  Because  I  hate  beer  and 
mathematics. 

But  I  write  editorials  at  a  few  dollars 
less  a  year,  because  I  love  it. 

And,  loving  it,  I  know  that  I  shall 
some  day  make  a  comfortable  living. 

For  there  is  a  competency  for  any  man 
in  any  job  in  the  world  into  which  he  can 
put  his  whole  self  enthusiastically. 

"  He  did  it  with  all  his  heart,"  as  I  have 
quoted  of  Hezekiah  before,  "  and  pros 
pered." 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  DISTRIBUTING 

MEDALS  HAS  RATHER  GOT 

INTO  A  RUT 

I    MET  him  in  the  smoking  car,  and  he 
told  me  he  was  a  steel  worker,  on  his 
way  to  find  a  job  in  one  of  the  new  ship 
yards.     I  remarked  that  the  wages  must 
be  very  large  in  the  shipyards. 

"  On  the  contrary,"  he  answered,  "  I 
shall  be  making  less  than  I  made  at  home 

—  and  I  '11  be  away  from  my  family  be 
sides. 

"  But  I  had  to  do  it,"  he  continued,  and 
his  eyes  flashed  as  he  spoke.  "  It 's  my 
way  of  doing  my  part — my  contribution 
to  the  men  that  are  fighting  to  make  this 
a  safe  world  for  my  kids." 

When  he  left  the  train  I  reflected  that 
this  is  one  of  the  unfortunate  facts  of  war 

—  that  it  calls  forth  the  sacrifice  of  the 
whole  nation,  and  honors  the  sacrifice  of 

only  a  very  few. 

186 


Distributing  Medals          187 

We  have  the  Congressional  medal  for 
the  man  who,  in  one  moment  of  valor, 
hurls  himself  over  the  trench;  and  nobly, 
in  truth,  does  he  deserve  it.  But  where 
is  the  medal  for  the  man  who,  day  after 
day,  quietly,  unobtrusively,  does  his  job, 
as  conscientiously  as  if  the  very  safety  of 
the  Republic  were  dependent  on  it? 

The  farther  I  go  in  the  world  the  more 
I  distrust  the  mere  outward  signs  of  great 
ness — the  titles  and  the  bank  rolls  and  the 
popular  applause. 

More  and  more  I  pin  my  faith  to  the 
spirit  in  which  a  man's  life  job  is  done. 

"  If  God  were  to  send  two  angels  to 
earth,"  said  Stephen  Tying,  "  one  to  sit 
on  the  throne  of  England  and  the  other  to 
sweep  the  streets  of  London,  the  service 
of  the  two  would  be  equally  honored  in 
His  sight." 

I  am  not  writing  to  reconcile  men  who 
have  failed,  to  failure;  I  have  no  sympathy 
with  any  man  who  weakly  contents  himself 
with  being  less  in  the  world  than  his  best. 

But  I  grow  very  impatient  with  the  kind 
of  talk  and  writing  which  would  make  us 


1 88     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

believe  that  there  is  only  one  sort  of  cour 
age —  the  courage  of  battlefield;  and  only 
one  sort  of  success  —  the  success  of  money, 
and  fame. 

Every  man  has  in  his  heart  the  seeds  of 
courage;  and  every  man  the  possibilities  of 
success. 

It  may  be  success  in  finance  or  in  brick 
laying;  in  government  or  in  gardening.  It 
matters  not:  the  measure  of  it  is  the  same. 

And  that  measure  consists  not  in  wealth 
or  titles,  but  in  a  man's  own  self-respect, 
his  own  deep-lying  consciousness  that  he 
has,  with  the  tools  that  were  given  him, 
done  his  level  best. 

There  lived  one  time  a  man  named 
Moses  whose  experience  with  democracy 
was  not  altogether  encouraging. 

He  saved  his  people  from  slavery;  and 
a  good  part  of  the  time  they  grumbled  at 
him  for  doing  it. 

"  Would  to  God  that  all  the  Lord's  peo 
ple  were  prophets !  "  he  exclaimed  one 
day.  By  which  I  take  it  that  Re  meant, 
"Would  to  God  there  were  a  spark  of 
divinity  in  them  that  would  make  them 


Distributing  Medals          189 

capable  of  wider  vision,  a  larger  measure 
of  self-sacrifice." 

Had  he  been  able  to  see  a  little  deeper, 
Moses  might  have  discovered  that  his  wish 
was  fulfilled:  that  there  is  in  every  man 
precisely  the  divinity  for  which  he  yearned. 

War  discovers  that  divinity  as  no  other 
great  experience  can.  All  around  me  I 
see  merchants,  and  day  laborers,  and  farm 
ers  who  have  risen  to  a  height  of  self- 
sacrifice  which  is  a  revelation  to  themselves 
and  to  all  who  know  them. 

It  is  our  misfortune  that  there  is  no  out 
ward  symbol  with  which  to  reward  that 
splendor.  The  business  of  awarding 
medals  has  fallen  into  certain  well-defined 
ruts. 

Perhaps  some  day  we  shall  see  more 
clearly  and  reward  with  greater  wisdom, 
honoring  equally  the  sacrifice  of  the  bat 
tlefield  and  the  sacrifice  at  home. 

For  both  are  sparks  of  the  same  divin 
ity —  twin  manifestations  of  the  presence 
of  the  same  great  Oversoul. 


THE  FINEST  INVESTMENT  YOU 
CAN  MAKE  IS  TO  HELP  THE 
RIGHT  YOUNG  MAN  FIND  THE 
RIGHT  JOB 

IN  an  office  not  far  from  mine  is  a  man 
thirty-six  years  old  whose  title  is  "  Of 
fice  Manager." 

So  far  as  salary  is  concerned  he  is  not 
a  failure.  He  makes  a  living  for  himself 
and  family;  he  carries  a  little  life  insur 
ance  and  saves  a  little  money. 

But  in  his  heart  he  knows  he  has  failed; 
he  is,  a  woeful,  pathetic  misfit. 

Nature  intended  him  for  a  farmer:  he 
wanted  to  go  to  an  agricultural  college, 
and  his  father  sent  him  to  a  business  school 
instead.  The  call  of  the  soil  is  in  his  ears, 
and  he  must  stifle  it  with  the  click  of  a 
typewriter. 

He  is  one  of  the  vast  army  of  those 
whose  brief  time  on  this  earth  has  been 
largely  lost  because  they  never  found  the 
work  for  which  they  were  made. 
190 


The  Finest  Investment        191 

When  I  consider  how  vast  that  army  is, 
and  the  bitterness  of  its  tragedy,  I  marvel 
that  fathers  do  not  consider  the  question 
of  their  sons'  careers  with  prayer  and  fast 
ing. 

Instead  of  which  there  are  many  men 
who  treat  the  lives  of  their  sons  as  though 
they  were  mere  pawns  in  the  game,  to  be 
moved  lightly  here  or  there. 

Michelangelo  wanted  to  be  an  artist: 
from  his  earliest  days  in  school  he  neg 
lected  everything  to  be  busy  with  his  pen. 
Yet  his  father  and  uncles,  far  from  wel 
coming  his  interest  as  a  direct  gift  from 
Heaven,  "  beat  him  cruelly,  for  they  hated 
the  profession  of  artist,  and,  in  their  ig 
norance  of  the  nobility  of  art,  it  seemed  a 
disgrace  to  have  one  in  the  house." 

John  Adams's  father  tried  by  main  force 
to  settle  the  boy  at  a  cobbler's  bench  for 
life. 

Handel's  father  despised  music  and 
would  not  have  a  musical  instrument  in 
the  house. 

Tennyson's  grandfather,  tossing  the  lad 
ten  shillings  for  an  elegy  on  his  grand- 


192     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

mother,  remarked:  "There,  that's  the 
first  money  you  ever  earned  by  your  poetry, 
and,  take  my  word  for  it,  it  will  be  the 
last." 

When  Lowell's  father  learned  that  his 
son  had  won  the  prize  offered  by  Harvard 
University  for  the  finest  poem  written  by 
an  undergraduate,  he  received  the  news  in 
sorrow. 

"  I  had  hoped,"  he  said  sadly,  "  that 
under  the  steadying  influence  of  college 
James  would  become  less  flighty." 

Lowell  spoke  out  of  the  depths  of  per 
sonal  experience  when  he  wrote: 

"  It  is  the  vain  endeavor  to  make  our 
selves  what  we  are  not  that  has  strewn  his 
tory  with  so  many  broken  purposes  and 
lives  left  in  the  rough." 

Not  all  fathers,  by  any  means,  have  been 
shortsighted.  A  great  majority,  fortu 
nately  for  the  world,  have  considered  the 
selection  of  the  right  career  by  their  sons 
as  the  most  important  problem  of  their 
lives. 

The  business  world  is  full  of  kindly,  big- 
visioned  men  who  have  given  time  and 


The  Finest  Investment        193 

thought,  not  merely  to  guiding  their  own 
sons'  careers,  but  also  to  setting  the  feet 
of  other  men's  sons  on  the  path  of  success. 

There  can  be  no  more  satisfactory  em 
ployment.  No  man  could  have  a  finer  epi 
taph  than  this:  "  He  was  the  friend  and 
helper  of  young  men." 

Organizations  fail,  stocks  prove  worth 
less,  the  most  carefully  made  investments 
too  often  leak  away.  But  a  young  life 
fitted  into  its  proper  place  in  the  world  is 
an  investment  whose  power  goes  on 
through  the  years,  and  even  into  eternity. 

"  Blessed  is  the  man  who  has  found  his 
work,"  said  Carlyle. 

And  thrice  blessed  is  the  man  who 
helped  that  man  to  find  it. 


THE  WORLD  IS  OWNED  BY  MEN 

WHO   CROSS  BRIDGES  BEFORE 

THEY  COME  TO  THEM 

A  YOUNG  man  came  one  day  to  Lorin 
F.  Deland,  that  wise  adviser  to  busi 
ness  men,  and  said  this:  "I  have  been 
three  years  in  the  same  job,  and  I  feel  that 
I  am  entirely  lost  sight  of  by  my  employers. 
There  is  no  future  ahead  of  me;  I  am  dis 
couraged  and  hopeless.  What  shall  I 
do?" 

Mr.  Deland  answered:  "  I  will  under 
take  to  help  you,  but  you  must  promise  to 
do  exactly  as  I  say."  The  young  man 
promised  hopefully. 

"  For  thirty  days,"  said  Mr.  Deland, 
"  I  want  you  to  concentrate  every  working 
minute  on  the  following  problem  :  '  What 
suggestion  can  I  make  to  my  employer  by 
which  he  can  in  the  next  calendar  year  in 
crease  his  sales  $50,000,  or  $5,000,  or 
$500,  or  $100?  ' 

At  the  end  of  thirty  days  the  young  man 
194 


Men  Who   Cross  Bridges      195 

returned  crestfallen  to  report  that  he  had 
not  been  able  to  think  of  one  single  sug 
gestion. 

Mr.  Deland  then  gave  him  this  problem 
for  the  second  month: 

"  Devote  every  energy  to  discovering 
some  way  by  which  your  employer  can  in 
the  next  year  save  $5,000,  or  $500,  or  $50 
in  the  cost  of  conducting  his  affairs." 

At  the  end  of  the  second  month  the 
young  man  was  back  again  with  a  second 
confession  of  failure.  He  said  also  that 
he  had  decided  not  to  ask  for  any  further 
help. 

Then  Mr.  Deland  spoke  his  mind : 

So,  Mills,  you  don't  care  for  any  more  of  my 
advice  [he  said].  Well,  this  time  I  am  going  to 
give  it  to  you  without  your  wanting  it.  My  boy, 
just  realize  a  moment  where  you  stand.  With 
the  enormous  amount  of  clothing  business  that 
is  being  done,  you  are  not  able,  though  you  have 
been  three  years  in  this  house,  to  increase  the 
volume  of  business  $100  a  year;  with  the  elabor 
ate  and  necessarily  wasteful  methods  in  which 
that  great  business  is  transacted,  you  are  not  near 
enough  to  it  to  point  out  a  better  system  in  any 


196     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

department  whereby  the  small  sum  of  $50  a  year 
may  be  saved. 

My  boy,  lie  low!  Attract  just  as  little  atten 
tion  to  yourself  as  you  can.  Don't  let  the  man 
ager  remember  that  you  have  been  three  years  in 
his  employ  if  you  can  help  it.  If  he  knew  how 
incapable  you  are  of  development  or  progress  he 
would  change  you  off  for  some  young  man  of 
greater  promise.  Lie  low,  my  boy,  lie  low. 

That  young  man  was  typical  of  thou 
sands  —  the  great  unimaginative  horde 
who  have  never  in  the  slightest  degree  de 
veloped  their  imaginations. 

I  do  not  like  the  phrase  "  never  cross  a 
bridge  until  you  come  to  it  ";  it  is  used  by 
too  many  men  as  a  cloak  for  mental  lazi 
ness. 

The  world  is  owned  by  men  who  cross 
bridges  on  their  imaginations  miles  and 
miles  in  advance  of  the  procession. 

Some  men  are  born  with  more  of  imag 
ination  than  others;  but  it  can,  by  hard 
work,  be  cultivated. 

Not  by  mere  day-dreaming,  not  by  lazy 
wondering,  but  by  hard  study  and  earnest 
thought. 


Men  Who   Cross  Bridges      197 

You  and  I  said  to  ourselves  idly: 
wonder  what  is  going  to  happen  when  the 


war  is  over." 


But  one  day  during  the  war  I  had 
luncheon  with  a  group  of  men  who  said: 
"  At  least  a  thousand  different  develop 
ments  are  coming  at  the  close  of  the  war, 
each  one  of  which  will  make  men  rich. 
Beginning  to-day  we  start  to  study  " 

I  met  another  man  who  has  recently 
been  added  to  the  staff  of  a  great  concern 
engaged  in  exporting  goods  to  South 
America. 

That  man  has  never  seen  South  Amer 
ica;  but  on  the  day  war  was  declared  in 
Europe  he  said  to  himself:  "Europe's 
trade  with  South  America  is  coming  to  us. 
I  am  going  to  learn  everything  there  is  to 
know  about  that  continent." 

He  crossed  his  bridge  four  years  in  ad 
vance. 

Looking  into  the  future,  what  bridges 
do  you  see? 


WE  SHALL  WIN  —  IF 
OUR  SENSE  OF  HUMOR  LASTS 

A  SERIOUS  minded  reader  took  me  to 
task  because  a  remark  in  an  article 
of  mine  during  the  war  seemed  to  him  too 
facetious. 

"  In  ordinary  times  this  might  be  all 
right,"  he  reminded  me;  "but  we  are  in 
the  midst  of  a  great  war,  and  it  is  no  time 
for  jokes." 

To  which  I  replied  that  we  were  in  the 
midst  of  a  great  war  —  therefore  we 
should  have  twice  as  many  jokes  and  they 
should  be  twice  as  funny. 

Only  yesterday  I  was  reading  about  a 
Cabinet  meeting  held  at  the  White  House 
in  one  of  the  most  critical  hours  of  our 
history.  The  incident  was  recorded  by 
Secretary  Stanton,  not  a  particularly  sym 
pathetic  reporter. 

Around  the  table  the  various  Secretaries 
gathered,  solemn-faced  and  silent.  To 
their  amazement,  the  President,  instead  of 
198 


We  Shall  Win  199 

turning  to  the  business  in  hand,  began  read 
ing  aloud  a  chapter  from  the  humorous 
works  of  Artemus  Ward. 

The  Cabinet  members  were  too  aston 
ished  to  speak:  Stanton  was  tempted  to 
leave  the  room  in  angry  protest. 

The  President,  unheeding,  read  the  chap 
ter  through.  Then,  laying  the  book  down,, 
he  heaved  a  deep  sigh  and  said: 

"  Gentlemen,  why  don't  you  laugh? 
With  the  fearful  strain  that  is  upon  me 
night  and  day,  if  I  did  not  laugh  I  should 
die;  and  you  need  this  medicine  as  much 
as  I." 

So  saying,  he  turned  to  his  tall  hat, 
which  was  on  the  table  beside  him,  and 
drew  out  what  Stanton  described  as  a  "  lit 
tle  white  paper." 

That  little  white  paper  was  the  Emanci 
pation  Proclamation. 

The  members  of  the  Cabinet  never  could 
fathom  the  mingling  of  laughter  and  tears 
that  was  the  secret  of  Lincoln's  greatness. 

They  were  afraid  of  laughter:  they  re 
garded  it  as  dangerous  and  —  in  times  like 
those  —  almost  immoral. 


200     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

But  Lincoln  knew  better.  Humor  to 
him  —  as  to  many  another  overburdened 
man  —  was  the  great  shock-absorber  of 
life:  without  its  kindly  ministrations,  the 
hard  places  of  the  road  would  have 
wrenched  his  soul  beyond  endurance. 

Napoleon  seldom  smiled;  Cromwell  had 
little  sense  of  humor.  Either  of  them 
would  be  a  dangerous  man  to  handle  our 
affairs  in  times  like  these. 

Such  men  become  too  profoundly  im 
pressed  with  their  own  importance.  And 
in  the  critical  moment  their  self-importance 
often  betrays  their  better  judgment. 

Give  us,  rather,  men  like  Washington, 
who,  as  Irving  writes,  frequently  leaned 
back  and  "  laughed  until  the  tears  ran 
down  his  face." 

Men  like  Lincoln,  whose  point  of  view 
is  so  detached  that  they  can  laugh  even  at 
themselves. 

A  saving  sense  of  humor  is  the  fourth 
great  Christian  virtue,  says  A.  C.  Benson. 
And  that  is  so  true  that  I  wish  it  had  been 
written  in  the  Bible  instead  of  in  one  of 
Mr.  A.  C.  Benson's  books. 


We  Shall  Win  201 

A  man  may  have  faith  and  hope  and 
chanty,  and  still  be  a  prig  and  a  bore. 

Jesus  was  none  of  these.  He  was  the 
most  popular  dinner  guest  in  Jerusalem. 

No  one  ever  criticized  Him  for  being 
too  serious  minded  and  respectable.  In 
stead,  He  was  criticized  for  dining  out  too 
much,  for  not  compelling  His  disciples  to 
fast,  and  for  being  too  much  with  the  loud 
laughing  crowd  of  "  publicans  and  sin 
ners." 

I  have  some  righteous  friends  who  are 
going  to  feel  greatly  shocked  at  the  con 
duct  of  the  saints  in  Heaven. 

They  have  never  read  that  verse  in  the 
Bible  which  says : 

"  He  that  sitteth  in  the  heavens  shall 
laugh." 

With  all  my  heart  I  would  urge  them  to 
begin  right  now  —  even  in  serious  days 
like  these  —  to  cultivate  that  fourth  great 
Christian  virtue. 

Lest  perchance  they  die,  and  —  in  a 
heaven  presided  over  by  a  God  who  dearly 
loves  a  laugh  —  shall  find  themselves  lone 
some  and  ill  at  ease. 


LIVING  IN  A  LIMOUSINE  AND 
LIVING  IN  A  TUB 

THERE  was  quite  a  little  group  of 
people  on  the  curb-stone,  waiting  for 
a  break  in  the  stream  of  passing  automo 
biles:  among  them  two  shop-girls  and  I. 

The  girls  recognized  a  woman  in  one  of 
the  limousines  as  the  wife  of  a  very  rich 
New  Yorker;  and  their  comments  were  dis 
tinctly  envious. 

I  smiled  to  myself  as  I  listened. 

For  only  a  few  days  before  I  had  been 
at  a  party  where  the  lady  in  the  limousine 
was  present:  and  I  wished  that  the  girls 
might  have  been  there  too,  and  heard  the 
remarks  she  made. 

She  came  dressed  in  a  thousand  dollars' 
worth  of  clothes,  with  five  or  ten  thousand 
dollars'  worth  of  jewels  sprinkled  over  her. 
And,  from  the  minute  of  her  arrival  until 
she  left,  her  conversation  consisted  of 
nothing  but  cynicism  and  complaint. 

She  had  just  moved  into  a  new  apart- 

202 


A  Limousine  and  a  Tub      203 

merit:  it  was  noisy,  she  said,  and  she  hated 
it  already. 

The  limousine  her  husband  had  given 
her  as  a  birthday  surprise  —  and  he  ought 
to  have  known  that  she  loathed  upholstery 
of  that  color. 

She  had  seen  all  the  new  shows,  and  they 
bored  her  to  death. 

Of  all  the  bitter,  soul-sick  people  whom 
I  have  ever  met  she  takes  first  prize:  and 
the  little  shop-girls  envied  her. 

What  feelings  would  have  been  in  their 
hearts  if  they  had  lived  in  Athens  about 
400  B.  c.,  and  had  seen  a  poorly  dressed 
man  living  in  a  wooden  tub? 

Pity,  probably :  perhaps  contempt. 

Yet,  when  Alexander  the  Great  visited 
that  man  and  offered  him  any  favor  in  the 
world,  the  man  replied  that  he  wanted  only 
one  thing — that  Alexander  should  step 
out  of  his  sunlight. 

A  curious  old  world,  is  n't  it,  where  a 
lady  in  her  limousine,  possessed  of  every 
thing,  is  still  dissatisfied:  and  Diogenes  in 
his  tub,  owning  nothing,  can  be  so  content? 

We  are  on  the  threshold  of  a  period 


204     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

when  the  struggle  to  get  things  is  going  to 
take  on  a  new,  perhaps  more  bitter,  phase. 

The  men  who  have  carried  the  hard,  un 
pleasant  burdens  of  the  world  learned,  dur 
ing  the  war,  their  power  over  the  world. 

They  have  learned  from  Russia  that  the 
most  strongly  intrenched  government  can 
not  stand  against  them. 

They  have  learned  from  England  that 
Labor  can  dictate  to  Cabinets;  in  America, 
as  Samuel  Gompers  says,  they  have  made 
in  three  years  a  generation  of  progress. 

I  do  not  see  how  any  real  lover  of  the 
race  can  fail  to  find  satisfaction  in  this 
great  forward  movement  of  the  common 
man. 

The  movement  will  have  its  excesses: 
but  has  capitalism  had  no  excesses?  It 
will  frequently  prove  expensive :  but  so  has 
every  previous  regime. 

My  fear  for  the  common  man  is  not  that 
he  will  cost  the  world  too  much,  but  that, 
when  he  gets  what  he  wants,  he  will  find 
that  he  has  still  somehow  failed  of  happi 
ness. 

I   would   have   him    study   a   little   the 


A  Limousine  and  a  Tub      205 

strange    case    of    Diogenes,    and    of    the 
limousine  lady. 

Before  he  sets  forth  on  his  journey  to 
the  top,  I  would  have  him  cut  out  these 
lines  of  Milton  and  paste  them  in  his  hat: 

He  that  has  light  within  his  own  clear  breast 
May  sit  in  the  center,  and  enjoy  bright  day; 

But  he  that  hides  a  dark  soul  and  foul  thoughts 
Be-nighted  wa^ks  under  the  mid-day  Sun  ; 

Himself  is  his  o\n  dungeon. 

From  the  dungeons  of  poverty  and  hun 
ger  and  want  the  common  man  is  going  to 
be  delivered :  I  would  put  him  on  his  guard, 
lest,  in  escaping  from  these,  he  be  plunged 
into  the  worse  dungeon  of  spiritual  death. 

His  mind  is  filled  now  with  the  thought 
of  a  day  when  every  one  will  have  his  own 
limousine. 

I  ask  him  to  remember  that  a  world  in 
which  we  all  lived  in  tubs  would  be  a  first- 
class  world,  if  we  all  had  the  spirit  of 
Diogenes: 

And  that  where  there  is  no  vision  the 
people  perish  just  as  surely  as  where  there 
is  no  food. 


DEMOCRACY  IS  A  NEW  SHOW, 

AND  EVERY  CITIZEN  IS  THE 

STAGE-MANAGER 

A  VERY  patriotic  citizen  came  to  me 
during  the  war,  much  perturbed. 

"  These  investigations  in  Washington 
are  outrageous,"  he  exclaimed.  "  Sup 
pose  there  have  been  mistakes;  is  that  any 
reason  why  we  should  advertise  them  to 
our  enemies? 

"  Is  there  any  sense  in  crying  from  the 
house-tops  that  we  have  only  nine  Brown 
ing  machine-guns,  and  that  our  men  are 
inadequately  clothed  and  equipped?  Such 
matters  ought  to  be  kept  secret." 

And  I  remarked  to  him  that  in  Germany 
such  matters  were  kept  secret. 

There  are  only  two  families  living  on  the 
world's  Main  Street,  I  said  to  him. 

There  is  the  Autocracy  family,  who  keep 
the  front  gate  locked  and  the  front  curtains 
drawn.  The  lawn  looks  tidy  and  the 
206 


Democracy  Is  a  New  Show     207 

house  is  well  kept;  but  no  one  knows 
what 's  going  on  behind  those  curtains. 

It  may  be  only  a  friendly  game  of 
pinochle:  but  it  may  be  counterfeiting,  or  a 
bomb  plot,  or  murder. 

And  there  is  the  Old  Widow  Democ 
racy.  Her  lawn  is  covered  with  tin  cans, 
and  the  children  are  scrapping  all  over  it, 
and  she  does  her  washing  right  out  on  the 
front  porch. 

But  she  's  in  sight  every  minute,  and  she 
has  to  be  pretty  honest,  whether  she  wants 
to  or  not. 

One  of  the  reasons  we  were  fighting,  I 
said  to  him,  was  to  make  the  Autocracy 
family  pull  up  those  curtains,  and  bring 
their  corn-cob  pipes  and  their  laundry  out 
on  the  porch. 

And  while  our  boys  were  over  in  Au 
tocracy's  front  yard,  breaking  the  windows 
and  letting  sunlight  into  the  back  rooms, 
we  didn't  want  anybody  —  the  President 
or  anyone  else  —  to  be  staying  at  home 
and  locking  our  doors  or  pulling  our  cur 
tains  down. 

Public  criticism  is  always  noisy,   some- 


208     It 's  a  Good  Old  World 

times  unpleasant,  and  frequently  mistaken: 
but  it  is  an  inseparable  feature  of  demo 
cratic  control.  And,  in  the  long  run,  it 
works  well  —  even  for  the  men  who  are 
criticized. 

And  now,  my  dear  Morley  [wrote  Gladstone 
to  John  Morley],  there  is  one  more  thing  I  wish 
to  say  to  you:  Take  it  from  me  that  to  endure 
trampling  on  with  patience  and  self-control  is  no 
bad  element  in  the  preparation  of  a  man  for 
walking  firmly  and  successfully  in  the  path  of 
great  public  duty.  Be  sure  that  discipline  is  full 
of  blessings. 

It  is  a  good  thing  also  for  business. 

One  of  the  great  captains  of  industry  of 
the  old  school  died  a  few  years  ago.  A 
little  while  before  his  death  he  attended  a 
meeting  of  the  directors  of  one  of  the  coun 
try's  largest  industries.  There  he  said 
something  like  this : 

"  I  am  convinced  that  I  have  been 
wrong,  and  that  you  younger  men  who 
have  stood  for  full  publicity  have  been 
right.  I  am  too  old  now  to  change :  but 
if  I  had  my  life  to  live  over  again  I  would 


take  the  public  into  my  confidence  straight 
through." 

Most  of  all,  publicity  is  a  good  thing  for 
governments. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  necessary  to  open  up  the 
processes  of  our  politics.  They  have  been  too 
secret,  too  complicated:  they  have  consisted  too 
much  of  private  conference  and  secret  under 
standings.  If  there  is  nothing  to  conceal,  then 
why  conceal  it  ?  If  it  is  a  public  game,  then  why 
play  it  in  private  ?  Publicity  is  one  of  the  purify 
ing  elements  of  politics. 

The  gentleman  who  made  these  remarks 
is  now  President  of  the  United  States  — 
the  same  gentleman  whom  many  tender 
hearted  people  are  seeking  to  shield  from 
the  publicity  in  which  he  so  thoroughly 
believes. 

Autocracy  is  a  very  old  performance. 
When  the  curtain  of  history  rose  six  or 
seven  thousand  years  ago,  kings  were  play 
ing  their  part  in  the  spot-light,  and  they 
have  been  on  the  stage  ever  since. 

Democracy  is  a  new  show,  still  in  re 
hearsal.  Every  individual  citizen  regards 


210     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

himself  as  the  stage-manager,  with  full 
liberty  to  shout  directions  at  the  actors,  or 
protest  at  the  top  of  his  voice  that  the 
performance  is  rotten. 

The  result  is  noise  and  confusion;  but 
there  is  no  doubt  that  gradually  the  show 
is  getting  better,  just  the  same. 


IS  YOUR  CONVERSATION  A 

GOOD  ADVERTISEMENT 

FOR  YOU? 

AS  we  rode  up  from  Washington  to 
gether  a  man  who  is  a  personal 
friend  of  President  Wilson  talked  to  me 
about  him. 

"  One  thing  that  always  impresses  me," 
he  said,  "  is  the  wonderful  precision  of  his 
speech.  His  mind  seems  to  reach  out  and 
grasp  the  needed  word  with  unfaltering 
accuracy.  I  have  never  known  him  to  hes 
itate  for  a  word,  or  employ  one  that  re 
quired  the  slightest  modification  or  expla 
nation. 

"  I  once  asked  him  to  what  he  attributed 
this  power. 

"  He  answered  that  it  was  due  to  the 
early  training  of  his  father. 

"  '  My  father  never  allowed  any  mem 
ber  of  his  household  to  use  an  incorrect 
expression,'  said  the  President.  '  Any 

211 


212     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

slip  on  the  part  of  one  of  the  children  was 
at  once  corrected;  any  unfamiliar  word 
immediately  explained,  and  each  of  us  en 
couraged  to  find  a  prompt  use  for  it  in  our 
conversation  so  as  to  fix  it  in  our  mem 
ories.'  " 

As  we  stepped  off  the  train  and  walked 
through  the  station,  we  passed  a  group  of 
smartly    dressed    young    women.     Their 
conversation,  as  we  caught  it,  was  some 
what  after  this  fashion: 
"Not  re-eally?" 
"  Sure.     I  thought  I  'd  die." 
"  You  don't  mean  it.     Not  re-eally." 
"  Sure  I  tell  you.     I  thought  I  'd  die." 
An  unjust  prejudice  has   grown  up   in 
the  world  against  the  man  who  talks  well, 
and  in  favor  of  the  wise-looking  individual, 
who  sits  stolid,  saying  nothing. 

My  observation  is  that,  generally  speak 
ing,  poverty  of  speech  is  the  outward  evi 
dence  of  poverty  of  mind. 

The  individual  whose  communication  is 
confined  to  half  a  dozen  worn  expressions, 
has  a  mind  that  is  not  working.  It  is 
merely  sliding  along  in  well-oiled  grooves. 


Your  Conversation  213 

A  mind  constantly  reaching  out  along 
new  paths  of  thought,  will  of  necessity  find 
new  language  with  which  to  clothe  that 
thought. 

There  is  a  certain  New  York  business 
man  among  my  friends  who  makes  it  a  rule 
to  ask  every  applicant  for  a  position  "  Can 
you  write  well?  " 

A  strange  question,  one  would  think,  to 
put  to  a  prospective  elevator  boy.  Yet 
the  man  has  a  reason  for  it. 

"  No  man  can  write  clearly,"  he  says, 
"  who  does  not  think  clearly.  I  want  to 
see  a  man's  mind  at  work  before  I  give 
him  a  place  in  my  organization." 

A  mastery  of  good,  clean-cut  English  is 
possible  to  anybody. 

One  very  good  way  to  acquire  it  is  by 
reading  aloud.  Select  some  author  whose 
work  is  worth  reading,  and  keep  your  mind 
fixed  not  merely  on  the  meaning  of  the 
words  but  on  the  words  themselves. 

Another  good  exercise  is  the  one  that 
Benjamin  Franklin  used.  He  would  read 
a  page  from  some  English  classic,  and  then, 
putting  away  the  book,  seek  to  reproduce  it 


214     It's  a  Good  Old  World 

in  writing.  By  comparing  his  own  version 
with  the  original,  he  learned  wherein  he 
could  improve. 

Emerson  said  that  Montaigne's  words 
had  so  much  vitality  that  if  one  were  to  cut 
them  they  would  bleed. 

Daniel  Webster  used  to  study  the  dic 
tionary  as  other  men  study  the  financial 
page. 

It  paid  him ;  it  will  pay  you. 

For  good  or  ill,  your  conversation  is 
your  advertisement. 

Every  time  you  open  your  mouth  you  let 
men  look  into  your  mind.  Do  they  see  it 
well  clothed,  neat,  businesslike? 

Or  is  it  slouching  along  in  shoes  run 
down  at  the  heel,  with  soiled  linen  and 
frazzled  trousers,  shabbily  seeking  to 
avoid  real  work? 


AND  A  DOG  RUNS  OUT  AND 
BARKS 

STRANGE  how  a  sound  will  some 
times  set  the  chords  of  memory  to  vi 
brating. 

It  may  be  a  woman's  laugh,  or  a  snatch 
of  song,  or  even  the  barking  of  a  dog  at 
twilight. 

The  other  night  I  left  the  train  two  sta 
tions  away  from  home,  and  started  to  walk 
the  rest  of  the  way  across  the  hills.  It 
began  to  snow  after  a  little.  From  the 
houses  along  the  road  lights  flickered 
through  the  haze;  and  as  I  rounded  a 
curve,  a  little  dog  ran  out  and  barked. 

In  an  instant  my  mind  leaped  back 
twenty  years  or  more,  to  the  days  when  I 
carried  a  newspaper-route  in  Boston.  I 
remembered  how  long  the  way  used  to 
seem  > —  two  miles  out  and  two  miles  back 
—  and  how  dark  it  was,  in  winter,  when 
the  sun  had  gone.  And  how  I  hated  one 
newspaper  that  used  to  issue  a  great  edi- 
215 


216      It's  a  Good  Old  World 

tion  of  twenty-four  pages  on  Saturday  eve 
nings.  The  editors  must  be  heartless  crea 
tures,  I  thought  to  myself;  surely  they  had 
never  been  boys  and  compelled  to  travel 
a  paper-route. 

In  a  big  house  up  on  the  hills,  in  the 
district  where  rich  men  lived,  there  were 
two  dogs  that  every  night  barked  at  me. 

"  Oh,  they  won't  bite,"  said  the  owner. 
'  They  bark,  but  they're  perfectly  good- 
natured." 

How  serenely  confident  every  man  is 
that  his  dog  is  perfectly  good-natured! 

Every  night  I  had  to  gird  up  my  cour 
age  to  start  out  on  that  route,  thinking 
of  those  two  dogs  that  would  run  out  and 
bark.  I  was  just  a  little  fellow,  in  short 
pants,  and  the  space  between  my  knees 
and  my  ankles  seemed  pathetically  unpro 
tected  —  just  made  for  dogs  to  bite. 

The  owner  caught  them  snapping  at  me 
one  night;  and  I  remember  yet  how  he 
laughed.  It  seemed  to  him  a  bully  joke 
—  a  little  boy  worried  by  two  big  barking 
dogs. 

I  shall  never  forget  that  owner  —  nor 


A  Dog  Runs  Out  and  Barks    217 

the  man  whose  house  stood  next  to  his. 

It  was  the  night  before  Christmas. 
Snow  was  coming  down,  and  it  seemed 
more  dark  than  usual,  and  the  papers  were 
heavy  and  the  route  more  long. 

I  had  just  come  out  of  the  yard  of  the 
man  with  the  dogs,  and  as  I  stepped  onto 
the  porch  of  the  next  house,  suddenly  the 
door  opened,  and  a  big  jolly-faced  man 
stood  smiling  in  the  lamplight. 

"  Hello,  kid,"  he  cried  jovially.  "  I  Ve 
been  waiting  for  you.  Do  you  know  what 
day  to-morrow  is?  " 

"  Yes,  sir,"  I  answered.  "  It 's  Christ 
mas." 

"  Right  you  are,"  he  shouted.  "  And 
here  's  something  from  Santa  Claus."  He 
opened  his  hand,  and  there  was  a  big  silver 
dollar. 

I  do  not  know  his  name;  I  have  not  seen 
him  in  twenty  years;  but  last  night,  walk 
ing  home  in  the  snow,  I  remembered  him 
with  a  warm  feeling  around  my  heart. 
And  I  fell  to  thinking  that  I  must  be 
pretty  nearly  as  big  now  as  he  was  when 
he  gave  me  that  dollar,  and  about  as  old. 


And  I  wondered  how  I  look  to  the  kid 
that  brings  my  paper  and  the  other  kids  I 
meet,  and  whether  I  am  the  kind  of  man 
that  is  always  too  busy  to  take  time  to  be 
kind  to  them  —  or  whether  I  am  the  kind 
that  they  would  sort  of  like  to  run  into, 
when  it's  cold,  and  the  route  is  long,  and 
the  burden  is  heavy. 

And  a  dog  runs  out  and  barks. 


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